|
On April 27 2014 15:05 6xFPCs wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2014 12:10 MonkeyBot wrote:Hi everyone, I could use a little general help. Below is a recent game that wasn't my best or worst, just an average game. I've been feeling like my play is really bad lately - I've just been more tired and less focused. I'm former gold, silver on new season. I know my play is bad, I know that everyone could comment negatively on every aspect of my play, but I just have one question: If I wanted to focus on improving only one thing to make my play more effective, what would it be? Thanks! http://ggtracker.com/matches/4967979/replay Watched in full. I am diamond atm, formerly masters in wol. One of the major problems I spotted is that you are always caught by surprise when he attacks, even though you spread overlords, have lings out, etc. If you want to do proper reactive zerg defense, you need to spot him the moment he moves out. If you can't fully handle that, you add a safety buffer of a few banes and some lings. Bigger buffer the worse you are--just like how you added "useless" spines against reapers. That is, ideally you wouldn't build them, but you do because you're not perfect. As you improve, you can slowly cut back. Basically, your biggest problem seems to be awareness. You are on macro autopilot, which you do well, but if he showed up with an all-in you would've died, you're as constantly unaware as I've ever seen. Here, you win because you outmacro him by a mile, enough to pull past him despite any damage he does (barely; I think that last fight would have killed you if he really pushed). If I had to guess, I'd wager that you die randomly in ZvZ and ZvP to timings or all-ins, but probably win most macro games due to overwhelming amounts of stuff. Another related problem is idle larvae, you inject ok, and you macro up pretty well for your league (I'd believe it if you said you were plat), but you're not building stuff on time, and that's a big part of why you lose bases and battles. You just don't have anything to contest his army, and since you're building an army only when he's already there, you're at maybe 1/3 of the army you could have and you lose a ton of stuff. Said another way, your primary problem (encompassing the larvae thing plus the awareness thing) is not building stuff on time. Minor issue: stop pulling drones. You seem to panic and pull them for almost anything, or at least in this game you pulled them twice for two battles that didn't require it, losing mining time in addition to a few drones. While I'm at it: never ever pull all your drones against widow mines. That was a tense moment. You can pull one or two to disarm the mines, but pulling all of them is a gift to the terran. Let me know if you'd like more input. That description would have fitted a lot of my games as well I am afraid. :/ So good advice, also for me! thanks!
|
On April 27 2014 15:09 6xFPCs wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2014 02:41 Saechiis wrote: I lost twice today versus gas first reactor hellion, I scouted it both times but I'm not sure what to do versus it. First time I made lings, but without speed they got kited without doing any damage, 3 queens is just not enough DPS to deal with 4 hellions in your base at 6 mins. Do you queen block the ramp and wait for speed? Both scenarios the player expanded right after the first 2 hellions (gas pull) and kept making hellions. Do I make an ermergency wall, 4 queens? One thing that helped me is using overlords out on the map to keep watch on the hellion or hellion/reaper force. This can give you enough warning to position queens properly, spot abnormally high hellion numbers, and put down emergency evos to wall. Since he is mainly building hellions-scvs-CCs, your overlords are pretty safe at that stage.
Yeah I love doing this, usually in ZvT I can literally see the entire map by 10 mins, my map awareness is not what it was in WoL though so sometimes I only notice stuff when it starts pushing on my creep even though I could have seen it before. Played against gas first hellions again in a custom game again, lost 15 drones because I was greedy and only sent them to my main when the hellions were already in my natural.
http://drop.sc/379420
Any advice on my Zerg would be great since I just switched, I'd like to know what I need to work on (besides map awareness as said). My opponent was irrelevant, I just bumped into him trying to work out timings vs AI. I'll post a more relevant replay as I play today.
|
On April 27 2014 15:05 6xFPCs wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2014 12:10 MonkeyBot wrote:Hi everyone, I could use a little general help. Below is a recent game that wasn't my best or worst, just an average game. I've been feeling like my play is really bad lately - I've just been more tired and less focused. I'm former gold, silver on new season. I know my play is bad, I know that everyone could comment negatively on every aspect of my play, but I just have one question: If I wanted to focus on improving only one thing to make my play more effective, what would it be? Thanks! http://ggtracker.com/matches/4967979/replay Watched in full. I am diamond atm, formerly masters in wol. One of the major problems I spotted is that you are always caught by surprise when he attacks, even though you spread overlords, have lings out, etc. If you want to do proper reactive zerg defense, you need to spot him the moment he moves out. If you can't fully handle that, you add a safety buffer of a few banes and some lings. Bigger buffer the worse you are--just like how you added "useless" spines against reapers. That is, ideally you wouldn't build them, but you do because you're not perfect. As you improve, you can slowly cut back. Basically, your biggest problem seems to be awareness. You are on macro autopilot, which you do well, but if he showed up with an all-in you would've died, you're as constantly unaware as I've ever seen. Here, you win because you outmacro him by a mile, enough to pull past him despite any damage he does (barely; I think that last fight would have killed you if he really pushed). If I had to guess, I'd wager that you die randomly in ZvZ and ZvP to timings or all-ins, but probably win most macro games due to overwhelming amounts of stuff. Another related problem is idle larvae, you inject ok, and you macro up pretty well for your league (I'd believe it if you said you were plat), but you're not building stuff on time, and that's a big part of why you lose bases and battles. You just don't have anything to contest his army, and since you're building an army only when he's already there, you're at maybe 1/3 of the army you could have and you lose a ton of stuff. Said another way, your primary problem (encompassing the larvae thing plus the awareness thing) is not building stuff on time. Minor issue: stop pulling drones. You seem to panic and pull them for almost anything, or at least in this game you pulled them twice for two battles that didn't require it, losing mining time in addition to a few drones. While I'm at it: never ever pull all your drones against widow mines. That was a tense moment. You can pull one or two to disarm the mines, but pulling all of them is a gift to the terran. Let me know if you'd like more input.
Thank you very much for the feedback. I totally agree with what you are saying, and no one's ever said it in this way. This will help me quite a bit. Also, I knew that drone pull against the mines was a mistake as soon as I did it... chalk it up to panic.
Again, thanks for taking the time.
|
On April 27 2014 19:17 Saechiis wrote:http://drop.sc/379420Any advice on my Zerg would be great since I just switched, I'd like to know what I need to work on (besides map awareness as said). My opponent was irrelevant, I just bumped into him trying to work out timings vs AI. I'll post a more relevant replay as I play today.
Gold zerg here.
If I don't see a reaper in my base when my first four lings / two queens I'm going to assume they're opening hellions to try to do damage. So I make sure I have a double evo + queen + some lings wall by the time that'd hit, like 6:30. My standard double evo timing is at 7:00 so it's not like the evos are a waste.
That can be done pretty much blind because the openings are so predictable. You saw the reactor hellion opening all over the place. At 3:39 you see with your overlord the barracks building a reactor and the factory about halfway done. That's like 100% for sure reactor hellions unless he decides to change his mind because it got scouted. Your ling sees no expand and a hellion at 5:07. Hellions drive past your watchtower vision. Etc etc.
|
On April 28 2014 09:57 MonkeyBot wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2014 15:05 6xFPCs wrote:On April 27 2014 12:10 MonkeyBot wrote:Hi everyone, I could use a little general help. Below is a recent game that wasn't my best or worst, just an average game. I've been feeling like my play is really bad lately - I've just been more tired and less focused. I'm former gold, silver on new season. I know my play is bad, I know that everyone could comment negatively on every aspect of my play, but I just have one question: If I wanted to focus on improving only one thing to make my play more effective, what would it be? Thanks! http://ggtracker.com/matches/4967979/replay Watched in full. I am diamond atm, formerly masters in wol. One of the major problems I spotted is that you are always caught by surprise when he attacks, even though you spread overlords, have lings out, etc. If you want to do proper reactive zerg defense, you need to spot him the moment he moves out. If you can't fully handle that, you add a safety buffer of a few banes and some lings. Bigger buffer the worse you are--just like how you added "useless" spines against reapers. That is, ideally you wouldn't build them, but you do because you're not perfect. As you improve, you can slowly cut back. Basically, your biggest problem seems to be awareness. You are on macro autopilot, which you do well, but if he showed up with an all-in you would've died, you're as constantly unaware as I've ever seen. Here, you win because you outmacro him by a mile, enough to pull past him despite any damage he does (barely; I think that last fight would have killed you if he really pushed). If I had to guess, I'd wager that you die randomly in ZvZ and ZvP to timings or all-ins, but probably win most macro games due to overwhelming amounts of stuff. Another related problem is idle larvae, you inject ok, and you macro up pretty well for your league (I'd believe it if you said you were plat), but you're not building stuff on time, and that's a big part of why you lose bases and battles. You just don't have anything to contest his army, and since you're building an army only when he's already there, you're at maybe 1/3 of the army you could have and you lose a ton of stuff. Said another way, your primary problem (encompassing the larvae thing plus the awareness thing) is not building stuff on time. Minor issue: stop pulling drones. You seem to panic and pull them for almost anything, or at least in this game you pulled them twice for two battles that didn't require it, losing mining time in addition to a few drones. While I'm at it: never ever pull all your drones against widow mines. That was a tense moment. You can pull one or two to disarm the mines, but pulling all of them is a gift to the terran. Let me know if you'd like more input. Thank you very much for the feedback. I totally agree with what you are saying, and no one's ever said it in this way. This will help me quite a bit. Also, I knew that drone pull against the mines was a mistake as soon as I did it... chalk it up to panic. Again, thanks for taking the time.
My pleasure, always happy to help.
On April 27 2014 19:17 Saechiis wrote:Show nested quote +On April 27 2014 15:09 6xFPCs wrote:On April 26 2014 02:41 Saechiis wrote: I lost twice today versus gas first reactor hellion, I scouted it both times but I'm not sure what to do versus it. First time I made lings, but without speed they got kited without doing any damage, 3 queens is just not enough DPS to deal with 4 hellions in your base at 6 mins. Do you queen block the ramp and wait for speed? Both scenarios the player expanded right after the first 2 hellions (gas pull) and kept making hellions. Do I make an ermergency wall, 4 queens? One thing that helped me is using overlords out on the map to keep watch on the hellion or hellion/reaper force. This can give you enough warning to position queens properly, spot abnormally high hellion numbers, and put down emergency evos to wall. Since he is mainly building hellions-scvs-CCs, your overlords are pretty safe at that stage. Yeah I love doing this, usually in ZvT I can literally see the entire map by 10 mins, my map awareness is not what it was in WoL though so sometimes I only notice stuff when it starts pushing on my creep even though I could have seen it before. Played against gas first hellions again in a custom game again, lost 15 drones because I was greedy and only sent them to my main when the hellions were already in my natural. http://drop.sc/379420Any advice on my Zerg would be great since I just switched, I'd like to know what I need to work on (besides map awareness as said). My opponent was irrelevant, I just bumped into him trying to work out timings vs AI. I'll post a more relevant replay as I play today.
Ok, watched it. Fun times, you were at about 6x his worker count for quite awhile.
Biggest issue other than awareness (12+ drones lost is a big ouch; and this was after you saw hellions with outer tower, then again with overlord as he massed up outside your base) is larvae management. For a ling-muta style you need more larvae, and you never drop a macro hatch. Even though your injects are solid, I think that harms you a lot--it caps your production, and if you decide to go pure ling against hellion, you really need as much larvae production as possible (you get a bit low on drones due to needing several waves of lings to contest the hellions). If your opponent had macro'd better (he had 3CCish and you had two hatch and lost 14 drones), a followup marine-medivac push with the remaining hellions could've wiped you. As it was, you got lucky with the banshee followup, and the fact that he doesn't really like to build scvs. For the macro hatch timing, I would suggest either following the Stephano rule (build a macro hatch any time your minerals hit 1k), or figure out a decent time to build it: either after your third gets set up (e.g., when first round of drones starts mining), or before your third if you're against heavy pressure play (i.e., it's not safe to take third because he is super invested in hellion/reaper/banshee, and since you need more larvae you must place a third hatch somewhere). It can be part of your wall, too, if you're worried about big hellion or blueflame play (though you absolutely need roaches in that case, in my opinion). Note that you can delay the macro hatch if you get roaches instead, since roaches are more larvae-efficient. I'd suggest you try incorporating a defensive roach warren into your play if your biggest problem in ZvT is hellions. It might seem less efficient than pure lings (each roach is gas not used on tech/muta), but roaches are a great threat that force the terran to play safe. Roaches used to scare a terran silly due to roach-bane busts (soulkey-style), now it is the 1-1 mass roach timing (hyun-style) that we can threaten. Anyway, something to consider.
The game was pretty much over after the big ling counter you did, but I would like to note that you should try to be more active with your mutas. He had a lot of holes in his defense, and you could've easily picked him apart. You don't need to be jaedong and micro your mutas constantly, either; you can use a mimimum of attention. For example, you can cautiously move in (watch for mines and thors), start attacking whatever building is not covered by turrets, and go back to macro. Then just use the minimap to back off the moment you get attacked; usually there's no need to interrupt your macro cycle beyond selecting the mutas and issuing a move command on the minimap. Any time he has a solid defense going, just pull back and patrol the mutas over common drop paths. From there, you can slowly figure out how much attention you can devote to the mutas at any given time.
|
On April 28 2014 17:13 6xFPCs wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2014 09:57 MonkeyBot wrote:On April 27 2014 15:05 6xFPCs wrote:On April 27 2014 12:10 MonkeyBot wrote:Hi everyone, I could use a little general help. Below is a recent game that wasn't my best or worst, just an average game. I've been feeling like my play is really bad lately - I've just been more tired and less focused. I'm former gold, silver on new season. I know my play is bad, I know that everyone could comment negatively on every aspect of my play, but I just have one question: If I wanted to focus on improving only one thing to make my play more effective, what would it be? Thanks! http://ggtracker.com/matches/4967979/replay Watched in full. I am diamond atm, formerly masters in wol. One of the major problems I spotted is that you are always caught by surprise when he attacks, even though you spread overlords, have lings out, etc. If you want to do proper reactive zerg defense, you need to spot him the moment he moves out. If you can't fully handle that, you add a safety buffer of a few banes and some lings. Bigger buffer the worse you are--just like how you added "useless" spines against reapers. That is, ideally you wouldn't build them, but you do because you're not perfect. As you improve, you can slowly cut back. Basically, your biggest problem seems to be awareness. You are on macro autopilot, which you do well, but if he showed up with an all-in you would've died, you're as constantly unaware as I've ever seen. Here, you win because you outmacro him by a mile, enough to pull past him despite any damage he does (barely; I think that last fight would have killed you if he really pushed). If I had to guess, I'd wager that you die randomly in ZvZ and ZvP to timings or all-ins, but probably win most macro games due to overwhelming amounts of stuff. Another related problem is idle larvae, you inject ok, and you macro up pretty well for your league (I'd believe it if you said you were plat), but you're not building stuff on time, and that's a big part of why you lose bases and battles. You just don't have anything to contest his army, and since you're building an army only when he's already there, you're at maybe 1/3 of the army you could have and you lose a ton of stuff. Said another way, your primary problem (encompassing the larvae thing plus the awareness thing) is not building stuff on time. Minor issue: stop pulling drones. You seem to panic and pull them for almost anything, or at least in this game you pulled them twice for two battles that didn't require it, losing mining time in addition to a few drones. While I'm at it: never ever pull all your drones against widow mines. That was a tense moment. You can pull one or two to disarm the mines, but pulling all of them is a gift to the terran. Let me know if you'd like more input. Thank you very much for the feedback. I totally agree with what you are saying, and no one's ever said it in this way. This will help me quite a bit. Also, I knew that drone pull against the mines was a mistake as soon as I did it... chalk it up to panic. Again, thanks for taking the time. My pleasure, always happy to help. Show nested quote +On April 27 2014 19:17 Saechiis wrote:On April 27 2014 15:09 6xFPCs wrote:On April 26 2014 02:41 Saechiis wrote: I lost twice today versus gas first reactor hellion, I scouted it both times but I'm not sure what to do versus it. First time I made lings, but without speed they got kited without doing any damage, 3 queens is just not enough DPS to deal with 4 hellions in your base at 6 mins. Do you queen block the ramp and wait for speed? Both scenarios the player expanded right after the first 2 hellions (gas pull) and kept making hellions. Do I make an ermergency wall, 4 queens? One thing that helped me is using overlords out on the map to keep watch on the hellion or hellion/reaper force. This can give you enough warning to position queens properly, spot abnormally high hellion numbers, and put down emergency evos to wall. Since he is mainly building hellions-scvs-CCs, your overlords are pretty safe at that stage. Yeah I love doing this, usually in ZvT I can literally see the entire map by 10 mins, my map awareness is not what it was in WoL though so sometimes I only notice stuff when it starts pushing on my creep even though I could have seen it before. Played against gas first hellions again in a custom game again, lost 15 drones because I was greedy and only sent them to my main when the hellions were already in my natural. http://drop.sc/379420Any advice on my Zerg would be great since I just switched, I'd like to know what I need to work on (besides map awareness as said). My opponent was irrelevant, I just bumped into him trying to work out timings vs AI. I'll post a more relevant replay as I play today. Ok, watched it. Fun times, you were at about 6x his worker count for quite awhile. Biggest issue other than awareness (12+ drones lost is a big ouch; and this was after you saw hellions with outer tower, then again with overlord as he massed up outside your base) is larvae management. For a ling-muta style you need more larvae, and you never drop a macro hatch. Even though your injects are solid, I think that harms you a lot--it caps your production, and if you decide to go pure ling against hellion, you really need as much larvae production as possible (you get a bit low on drones due to needing several waves of lings to contest the hellions). If your opponent had macro'd better (he had 3CCish and you had two hatch and lost 14 drones), a followup marine-medivac push with the remaining hellions could've wiped you. As it was, you got lucky with the banshee followup, and the fact that he doesn't really like to build scvs. For the macro hatch timing, I would suggest either following the Stephano rule (build a macro hatch any time your minerals hit 1k), or figure out a decent time to build it: either after your third gets set up (e.g., when first round of drones starts mining), or before your third if you're against heavy pressure play (i.e., it's not safe to take third because he is super invested in hellion/reaper/banshee, and since you need more larvae you must place a third hatch somewhere). It can be part of your wall, too, if you're worried about big hellion or blueflame play (though you absolutely need roaches in that case, in my opinion). Note that you can delay the macro hatch if you get roaches instead, since roaches are more larvae-efficient. I'd suggest you try incorporating a defensive roach warren into your play if your biggest problem in ZvT is hellions. It might seem less efficient than pure lings (each roach is gas not used on tech/muta), but roaches are a great threat that force the terran to play safe. Roaches used to scare a terran silly due to roach-bane busts (soulkey-style), now it is the 1-1 mass roach timing (hyun-style) that we can threaten. Anyway, something to consider. The game was pretty much over after the big ling counter you did, but I would like to note that you should try to be more active with your mutas. He had a lot of holes in his defense, and you could've easily picked him apart. You don't need to be jaedong and micro your mutas constantly, either; you can use a mimimum of attention. For example, you can cautiously move in (watch for mines and thors), start attacking whatever building is not covered by turrets, and go back to macro. Then just use the minimap to back off the moment you get attacked; usually there's no need to interrupt your macro cycle beyond selecting the mutas and issuing a move command on the minimap. Any time he has a solid defense going, just pull back and patrol the mutas over common drop paths. From there, you can slowly figure out how much attention you can devote to the mutas at any given time.
Thanks that's helpful. My thought process behind what I'm trying to do is getting 16 mineral drones on both hatches and 1 mining gas then pump pure lings as speed finishes while going double ups and double expand. In my mind a "macro" hatch would be better off on a base, but there might be pressure that'd kill me I don't know. I missed my ling round and made a round of drones instead this game so the hellions wrecked my mineral line Also I went for the instant Lair and overlord speed because I saw the tech lab starport and then it kinda made sense to go directly into mutas as I had the Lair and he should be low on marine production and far from stim.
Generally though, would that be viable to go 2 base 32 drone mineral saturation plus 1 gas and take map control with mass lings around 7 and then take 2 bases, 1 of which only serves as gas/ larvae base (or a my 3rd got killed so transfer drones here base)? Or is that considered too vulnerable as losing a hatch of production would also lose you the ability to flood lings? I guess in that case I could also overproduce banelings or emergency roaches to spend my money. I currently like to save my money and larvae when I can though so I can tech switch heavily later on, is that a bad habit to have?
|
On April 28 2014 20:33 Saechiis wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2014 17:13 6xFPCs wrote:On April 28 2014 09:57 MonkeyBot wrote:On April 27 2014 15:05 6xFPCs wrote:On April 27 2014 12:10 MonkeyBot wrote:Hi everyone, I could use a little general help. Below is a recent game that wasn't my best or worst, just an average game. I've been feeling like my play is really bad lately - I've just been more tired and less focused. I'm former gold, silver on new season. I know my play is bad, I know that everyone could comment negatively on every aspect of my play, but I just have one question: If I wanted to focus on improving only one thing to make my play more effective, what would it be? Thanks! http://ggtracker.com/matches/4967979/replay Watched in full. I am diamond atm, formerly masters in wol. One of the major problems I spotted is that you are always caught by surprise when he attacks, even though you spread overlords, have lings out, etc. If you want to do proper reactive zerg defense, you need to spot him the moment he moves out. If you can't fully handle that, you add a safety buffer of a few banes and some lings. Bigger buffer the worse you are--just like how you added "useless" spines against reapers. That is, ideally you wouldn't build them, but you do because you're not perfect. As you improve, you can slowly cut back. Basically, your biggest problem seems to be awareness. You are on macro autopilot, which you do well, but if he showed up with an all-in you would've died, you're as constantly unaware as I've ever seen. Here, you win because you outmacro him by a mile, enough to pull past him despite any damage he does (barely; I think that last fight would have killed you if he really pushed). If I had to guess, I'd wager that you die randomly in ZvZ and ZvP to timings or all-ins, but probably win most macro games due to overwhelming amounts of stuff. Another related problem is idle larvae, you inject ok, and you macro up pretty well for your league (I'd believe it if you said you were plat), but you're not building stuff on time, and that's a big part of why you lose bases and battles. You just don't have anything to contest his army, and since you're building an army only when he's already there, you're at maybe 1/3 of the army you could have and you lose a ton of stuff. Said another way, your primary problem (encompassing the larvae thing plus the awareness thing) is not building stuff on time. Minor issue: stop pulling drones. You seem to panic and pull them for almost anything, or at least in this game you pulled them twice for two battles that didn't require it, losing mining time in addition to a few drones. While I'm at it: never ever pull all your drones against widow mines. That was a tense moment. You can pull one or two to disarm the mines, but pulling all of them is a gift to the terran. Let me know if you'd like more input. Thank you very much for the feedback. I totally agree with what you are saying, and no one's ever said it in this way. This will help me quite a bit. Also, I knew that drone pull against the mines was a mistake as soon as I did it... chalk it up to panic. Again, thanks for taking the time. My pleasure, always happy to help. On April 27 2014 19:17 Saechiis wrote:On April 27 2014 15:09 6xFPCs wrote:On April 26 2014 02:41 Saechiis wrote: I lost twice today versus gas first reactor hellion, I scouted it both times but I'm not sure what to do versus it. First time I made lings, but without speed they got kited without doing any damage, 3 queens is just not enough DPS to deal with 4 hellions in your base at 6 mins. Do you queen block the ramp and wait for speed? Both scenarios the player expanded right after the first 2 hellions (gas pull) and kept making hellions. Do I make an ermergency wall, 4 queens? One thing that helped me is using overlords out on the map to keep watch on the hellion or hellion/reaper force. This can give you enough warning to position queens properly, spot abnormally high hellion numbers, and put down emergency evos to wall. Since he is mainly building hellions-scvs-CCs, your overlords are pretty safe at that stage. Yeah I love doing this, usually in ZvT I can literally see the entire map by 10 mins, my map awareness is not what it was in WoL though so sometimes I only notice stuff when it starts pushing on my creep even though I could have seen it before. Played against gas first hellions again in a custom game again, lost 15 drones because I was greedy and only sent them to my main when the hellions were already in my natural. http://drop.sc/379420Any advice on my Zerg would be great since I just switched, I'd like to know what I need to work on (besides map awareness as said). My opponent was irrelevant, I just bumped into him trying to work out timings vs AI. I'll post a more relevant replay as I play today. Ok, watched it. Fun times, you were at about 6x his worker count for quite awhile. Biggest issue other than awareness (12+ drones lost is a big ouch; and this was after you saw hellions with outer tower, then again with overlord as he massed up outside your base) is larvae management. For a ling-muta style you need more larvae, and you never drop a macro hatch. Even though your injects are solid, I think that harms you a lot--it caps your production, and if you decide to go pure ling against hellion, you really need as much larvae production as possible (you get a bit low on drones due to needing several waves of lings to contest the hellions). If your opponent had macro'd better (he had 3CCish and you had two hatch and lost 14 drones), a followup marine-medivac push with the remaining hellions could've wiped you. As it was, you got lucky with the banshee followup, and the fact that he doesn't really like to build scvs. For the macro hatch timing, I would suggest either following the Stephano rule (build a macro hatch any time your minerals hit 1k), or figure out a decent time to build it: either after your third gets set up (e.g., when first round of drones starts mining), or before your third if you're against heavy pressure play (i.e., it's not safe to take third because he is super invested in hellion/reaper/banshee, and since you need more larvae you must place a third hatch somewhere). It can be part of your wall, too, if you're worried about big hellion or blueflame play (though you absolutely need roaches in that case, in my opinion). Note that you can delay the macro hatch if you get roaches instead, since roaches are more larvae-efficient. I'd suggest you try incorporating a defensive roach warren into your play if your biggest problem in ZvT is hellions. It might seem less efficient than pure lings (each roach is gas not used on tech/muta), but roaches are a great threat that force the terran to play safe. Roaches used to scare a terran silly due to roach-bane busts (soulkey-style), now it is the 1-1 mass roach timing (hyun-style) that we can threaten. Anyway, something to consider. The game was pretty much over after the big ling counter you did, but I would like to note that you should try to be more active with your mutas. He had a lot of holes in his defense, and you could've easily picked him apart. You don't need to be jaedong and micro your mutas constantly, either; you can use a mimimum of attention. For example, you can cautiously move in (watch for mines and thors), start attacking whatever building is not covered by turrets, and go back to macro. Then just use the minimap to back off the moment you get attacked; usually there's no need to interrupt your macro cycle beyond selecting the mutas and issuing a move command on the minimap. Any time he has a solid defense going, just pull back and patrol the mutas over common drop paths. From there, you can slowly figure out how much attention you can devote to the mutas at any given time. Thanks that's helpful. My thought process behind what I'm trying to do is getting 16 mineral drones on both hatches and 1 mining gas then pump pure lings as speed finishes while going double ups and double expand. In my mind a "macro" hatch would be better off on a base, but there might be pressure that'd kill me I don't know. I missed my ling round and made a round of drones instead this game so the hellions wrecked my mineral line Also I went for the instant Lair and overlord speed because I saw the tech lab starport and then it kinda made sense to go directly into mutas as I had the Lair and he should be low on marine production and far from stim. Generally though, would that be viable to go 2 base 32 drone mineral saturation plus 1 gas and take map control with mass lings around 7 and then take 2 bases, 1 of which only serves as gas/ larvae base (or a my 3rd got killed so transfer drones here base)? Or is that considered too vulnerable as losing a hatch of production would also lose you the ability to flood lings? I guess in that case I could also overproduce banelings or emergency roaches to spend my money. I currently like to save my money and larvae when I can though so I can tech switch heavily later on, is that a bad habit to have?
Let me just say that a lot of the discussion from here is my opinion, and more speculative than purely replay critique. Others should feel free to chime in, as well.
I do like your build, it's well-constructed and probably works wonders against, say, a reaper expand into aggressive marine tank (basically anything that tries to hit the third early and punish a greedy zerg, espc on a short map). The problem is that it delays your third a lot, and the lings can't break a wall on their own, so you leave a timing window where you have a solid army of 1-1 lings, but a late third and lower production (around the time when your double expos are finishing and you start droning them, you're still on two hatch production). All this stuff bears mentioning because it seems like you're at the level where you've really refined a build and probably get some solid wins with it (e.g., this game, where the ling runby completely smashed him), but are starting to see where it can come apart. The hellion issues are one of the symptoms of this problem, where early hellions (even hellion expo) can outclass your lings and kill drones, and because you have no third and limited larvae, you can fall behind in econ. Restated more generally, the problem is that you don't ramp up smoothly, you spike to two bases of saturation and then spike lings, but it's a serious commitment to lings, and a smart terran will be able to carefully take his third and leave you in the dust economically. And the hellions mess with the earlier part of your strategy. Of course, you then spike econ by double expoing, which gives your play a cool hyun-esque rhythm (iirc, it's hyun who makes giant waves of all drones or all units?). But without the threat of busting the terran, the giant 1-1 ling swell can end up pretty useless.
Also, I don't mind double expo, but there's usually no reason to delay your third this much in ZvT. You can always take an early fourth off a similar game plan. Likewise the saving for tech switch, it's a good idea but you are probably better served by grabbing bane speed ASAP or an extra few mutas with it. I don't think hive tech is game-winning anymore, it's mostly support for the core ling-bane-muta, so I would overall discourage heavy tech switches in ZvT. Though if you're talking about some kind of PiG-style SH switch or something, I have zero clue about that.
|
Hi, I am a gold zerg who have been struggling with mech. Usually against players who just stay on 3 bases until those are fully secured, then move out to take a 4th, and then so on.
Here is an example game: Thors, Viking, Hellion, Tank, Window Mine style (+ ravens in late game) http://drop.sc/379582
2:30 Made natural outside for creep spread 9:49 Saw his 3rd base a bit too late (was droning heavily without lings). Even so, I can't deny that because of hellions + marines. 10:00 Tried to harass but PF too strong 11:31 Macro hatch and 2 spires for upgraded mutas http://day9.tv/d/Day9/day9-daily-679-gsl-code-s/ (Following Day9 daily's how to wrech mech) 13:00 Burrowed lings all over so I know if he will take a 4th base 18:00 Knew he was going to take a 4th base, but that mine field... 22:00 I learnt that mutas do not have priority targeting on mines... got a few aoes on them for nothing. Still managed to defend 23:24 How do the mines fire so fast?? Aren't mutas supposed to kill them first? Onwards: Pretty much dead because of low army supply
Any help vs this kind of mech army? Usually they end with some amount of Thors, Tanks, Hellbats, Ravens (6+) and Vikings, depending on what composition you go. Window mines are included in early and mid game to fend off mutas and lings/blings.
|
United States4883 Posts
On April 29 2014 21:34 Immutant wrote:Hi, I am a gold zerg who have been struggling with mech. Usually against players who just stay on 3 bases until those are fully secured, then move out to take a 4th, and then so on. Here is an example game: Thors, Viking, Hellion, Tank, Window Mine style (+ ravens in late game) http://drop.sc/3795822:30 Made natural outside for creep spread 9:49 Saw his 3rd base a bit too late (was droning heavily without lings). Even so, I can't deny that because of hellions + marines. 10:00 Tried to harass but PF too strong 11:31 Macro hatch and 2 spires for upgraded mutas http://day9.tv/d/Day9/day9-daily-679-gsl-code-s/ (Following Day9 daily's how to wrech mech) 13:00 Burrowed lings all over so I know if he will take a 4th base 18:00 Knew he was going to take a 4th base, but that mine field... 22:00 I learnt that mutas do not have priority targeting on mines... got a few aoes on them for nothing. Still managed to defend 23:24 How do the mines fire so fast?? Aren't mutas supposed to kill them first? Onwards: Pretty much dead because of low army supply Any help vs this kind of mech army? Usually they end with some amount of Thors, Tanks, Hellbats, Ravens (6+) and Vikings, depending on what composition you go. Window mines are included in early and mid game to fend off mutas and lings/blings. ]
Before watching replay:
These things should be kept in mind: 1) Need a solid economic opening to get 3 bases and not die to reaper/hellion/banshee stuff 2) Need to identify mech at the right time (~10:00-12:00) 3) Denying bases, particularly the third and fourth, is going to be a key thing 4) Ultimate goal is muta/SH with some infestor support
Watching the replay:
-If you're going to drone scout on this map, only scout cross map. Everything is too far away and you can't afford to lose that much resources scouting the whole map. -Take the backdoor expo lol. Why are you taking the exposed front base? -Your build order needs some work, this looks like a YOLO build. You should copy a build straight out of imbabuilds.com.
-Failed to scout mech. You need to be poking around with your overlords ~6:00-7:00 to be looking for a third CC and ebays vs. armories. You want to check again later around 10:00-12:00 to verify if he's going lots of factories or lots of rax. -This led to continuous muta/ling/bling play, which is not useful versus mech. -By 16:00, you're so far behind that you can't really make anything work. No further analysis needed.
KEY CONCEPTS:
1) You need a better opening. Your spending is decent but completely nonsensical. This is the best one I can find on imbabuilds: http://imbabuilds.com/hots-zerg/hots-zvt/zvt-scarletts-macro-mutalisk-style/. Your goal in the beginning of the game should be to get 3 bases, lair tech, and evo upgrades, no matter what composition you're up against. The second important thing that you missed is scouting; you didn't even know you were playing against mech until ~18:00! This is a serious problem with your gameplay right now and needs work in order for you to improve.
2) The mid game needs to be EITHER: ---a) a big roach attack to break the third into muta/SH OR ---b) mutalisk harass into burrowed roaches and constant harass to deny the fourth into SH OR ---c) mutalisk harass into SH and mass expansion
You want ~40 mutas and ~15 SH, a lot of creep spread, and lots of expansions. The goal is to contain the meching player on four bases and never allow them to control more than that. If you give mech free reign on the map, you're going to lose 100% of the time. It's up to the Zerg player to make sure damage gets done and the Terran player can't just continue massing energy units and taking bases for free.
3) Execution: -Mutalisks need to always be poking and harassing the fringes of his base and forcing him to have to build turrets, position mines, thors, etc. You need to watch the mutalisks, but at the same time, it's okay to trade a few mutalisks for turrets or lone thors since you SHOULD have a lot of gas banked up and the SH are making up for your cost-efficiency. You need ~20 stacked mutas to pick off a mine before it fires (at least 3 rows). When the game gets to ravens, you need to force the ravens to continually spend energy by baiting seeker missiles, PDDs, etc. (without suiciding the mutas). -Roaches are used only to be aggressive and deny the third or fourth base. Beyond this, they lose all of their usefulness and become dead supply (and wasted money). I highly suggest SKIPPING the roach phase (beyond defending hellions with ~8 maximum) and going straight to SH until you have a better understanding of the matchup and improve your mechanics. -Creep spread has to be really strong in order to get your SH where they need to be to contain the meching player. It also allows you to deal with hellion runbys better as well as giving you more time to delay a pre-hive push. Against mech, make creep spread and mass expanding a high priority. -Extra expansions beyond 4 are used only for gas. You don't need the extra mineral income, you need the gas income for mutalisks and upgrades. On smaller maps, offensive expansions help steal gas from potential 5th bases of mech and stall the Terran player's progress. -SH need to be constantly hitting the front and forcing tanks to be in position. If he doesn't have tanks in position, he'll just continually lose free supply. The nice thing about this is that sometimes the mutalisks can run over and snipe a few tanks if the thors/air army get out of position. -Later in the game when the raven/viking ball gets too big, you need to add infestors and bait the air army into fungals. Otherwise, it's just a little too hard to trade cost-efficiently with the mutas.
ALL RIGHT, that's a dense wall of text! Hope that helps some!
|
I have been looking for an answer by search and no result. What if in ZvT i go the standard defence against reapers and they go FE into Mech. That fast speed is useless now, and I feel behind. Im building my 3/4 queen by the time i realize they are not doing a reaper hellion build. Do i cancel gas, queens etc? I feel lost and behind. I take a third but it takes much longer to saturate. How to i correct getting early speed?
|
On April 30 2014 05:15 phrenzy wrote: I have been looking for an answer by search and no result. What if in ZvT i go the standard defence against reapers and they go FE into Mech. That fast speed is useless now, and I feel behind. Im building my 3/4 queen by the time i realize they are not doing a reaper hellion build. Do i cancel gas, queens etc? I feel lost and behind. I take a third but it takes much longer to saturate. How to i correct getting early speed? i don't want to be rude or insulting, but your overall understanding of the matchup seems very low based on this question. you have absolutely no reason to cancel speed or queens and you are not behind. you usually need to inject 3 bases and spread creep no matter what terran is doing. are you playing at a very low level or against some kind of early timing with tanks/thors/hellbats?? typically a mech terran still uses hellion/reaper or hellion/reaper/banshee. if he skips hellions he has no map control and you can do whatever you want. why would it take you longer to saturate your bases if there are no hellions? it sounds like you're dealing with some pretty nonstandard play
|
@SC2John
I made my natural outside because: 1) The backdoor mining base is totally safe (implying I can take it anytime I want.) 2) Many times I made the natural in base, and got my third (outside) denied by banshees/hellions/reaper packs. 3) Hence, I made my 2nd base outside so that creep will spread and I can make a spine/spore asap to chase away anyway pressure. After which I can safety and easily take my 3rd in base.
I also positively identified mech play around the 11:00~ mark.
I quoted Day9 daily because he seems to think 3/3 mutas are the way to counter mech play. And the only time I would get 2 spires at once is because I know he is immobile and I can quickly tech without spending on units. Never in all my games vs bio would I throw down 2 spires unless distracted. (Wasn't distracted that game because he was passive. And I recall knowing he went mech).
And yeah you are right.. I mostly wing all my builds because I was a random player. Thanks for the advice
|
United States4883 Posts
On April 30 2014 09:33 Immutant wrote:@SC2John I made my natural outside because: 1) The backdoor mining base is totally safe (implying I can take it anytime I want.) 2) Many times I made the natural in base, and got my third (outside) denied by banshees/hellions/reaper packs. 3) Hence, I made my 2nd base outside so that creep will spread and I can make a spine/spore asap to chase away anyway pressure. After which I can safety and easily take my 3rd in base. I also positively identified mech play around the 11:00~ mark. I quoted Day9 daily because he seems to think 3/3 mutas are the way to counter mech play. And the only time I would get 2 spires at once is because I know he is immobile and I can quickly tech without spending on units. Never in all my games vs bio would I throw down 2 spires unless distracted. (Wasn't distracted that game because he was passive. And I recall knowing he went mech). And yeah you are right.. I mostly wing all my builds because I was a random player. Thanks for the advice
That's actually solid reasoning for the front base, I'll take it. I never saw a definitive confirmation of mech other than "oh, he has BFH, that's probably mech," but I'll take your word for it. I also haven't seen the Day9 video, but I assume he's talking about the muta/SH style that is really popular right now (and imo, the ONLY way to beat mech).
As for double upgraded mutas, that's fine. But you need to be using them. The power of playing against mech is more than mobility, it's more like playing with the composition. When you pressure early with mutalisks, you're basically forcing NOT TANKS to be made, meaning that any kinds of early pushes are ruled out and that roach/SH pressure afterwards will be stronger. In this case, you opponent made very few tanks to start and a roach pressure probably would have outright killed him (but that has more to do with his awful build). Later on, the SH/roaches and muta ball basically want to act on opposite sides of the map and help to pull the mech army in different directions so that you can win little victories all over the place.
If you can play the first 10 minutes of the game flawlessly with good mechanics and a good game plan, you can go straight to masters. I'm a strong believer in that, so just focus on that part of your gameplay and don't worry yourself too much with the specifics of the mid and late game
|
Thanks for the insight
I think I made too many lings because I had too many minerals and are not used to expanding all over the map (usually u get them all killed by medivacs). Next time I'll just mass a spine/spore wall and keep whittling away at the Terran (urgh, how tedious...)
|
First off I want to thank SC2John for his awesome post vs mech, felt that it was as very useful read.
I don't really know exactly what my question here is but I've been having a bit of troubles in ZvP. I'm mostly just throwing it out there not expecting any revolutionary answers.
Against P I usually want to go heavy on the lings and light on the roaches (would prefer to skip them), quite a few times I've been killed by all-ins but mostly just thought it was because I either failed a bit of my macro/injects or because I overcommited while he used FF, I know that surrounds are the key. However some matches I just felt it was impossible holding all ins without roaches, so I started going for roach compositions but then I started geting wrecked by colossus timings. Some games I get out enough corrupters and some not, also some games I just fall into the trap of overmaking corrupters and then having the toss just mass warp in and kill me.
The roach/hydra comp is viable for such a short window and my build orders/macro is not solid enough to make sure I hit that window hard enough, I'm a plat player atm.I don't really like viper play and would like to avoid that but have tried it a few times, anyway all these factors made me give up on the roach based play and go back to try learning how to go lings early game against P.
Once again I get wrecked by all ins and then I meet this protoss, that does early pressure on my third and notices I go heavy lings. Then later just when going into mutas he attacks me with huge zealot+pheonix attack. I missed scouting the stargate which is a mistake of my part but at this point I just feel helpless. No matter what I do the protoss just hard counters it and kills me. On other hand even if I know exactly what the protoss is doing there is never anyway for me to punish him.
Is the only way to play solidly against protoss to mindgame them? I have to go early roaches to make them think I'm going roaches and then later go heavy lings or else he will just outright kill me? I just don't know how to play this matchup reliably without going heavy roaches that just carries me into a losing position in the mid/end game anyhow.
|
United States4883 Posts
On April 30 2014 16:24 Shuffleblade wrote: First off I want to thank SC2John for his awesome post vs mech, felt that it was as very useful read.
I don't really know exactly what my question here is but I've been having a bit of troubles in ZvP. I'm mostly just throwing it out there not expecting any revolutionary answers.
Against P I usually want to go heavy on the lings and light on the roaches (would prefer to skip them), quite a few times I've been killed by all-ins but mostly just thought it was because I either failed a bit of my macro/injects or because I overcommited while he used FF, I know that surrounds are the key. However some matches I just felt it was impossible holding all ins without roaches, so I started going for roach compositions but then I started geting wrecked by colossus timings. Some games I get out enough corrupters and some not, also some games I just fall into the trap of overmaking corrupters and then having the toss just mass warp in and kill me.
The roach/hydra comp is viable for such a short window and my build orders/macro is not solid enough to make sure I hit that window hard enough, I'm a plat player atm.I don't really like viper play and would like to avoid that but have tried it a few times, anyway all these factors made me give up on the roach based play and go back to try learning how to go lings early game against P.
Once again I get wrecked by all ins and then I meet this protoss, that does early pressure on my third and notices I go heavy lings. Then later just when going into mutas he attacks me with huge zealot+pheonix attack. I missed scouting the stargate which is a mistake of my part but at this point I just feel helpless. No matter what I do the protoss just hard counters it and kills me. On other hand even if I know exactly what the protoss is doing there is never anyway for me to punish him.
Is the only way to play solidly against protoss to mindgame them? I have to go early roaches to make them think I'm going roaches and then later go heavy lings or else he will just outright kill me? I just don't know how to play this matchup reliably without going heavy roaches that just carries me into a losing position in the mid/end game anyhow.
There are a couple of ways to open in ZvP.
1) 1 evo -> roach/ling. This style is mainly used to combat early pressure and completely shut down a lot of allins. However, I feel like it gets progressively weaker and weaker as you near the 12:00 mark, so I tend to avoid it. In addition, you have to be really careful with the number of roaches you make for defense because if you overmake roaches you can end up in a situation where the roaches are fairly useless against immortals/sentries and you also have too low of an economy to produce anything else. This is pretty much the standard opening. It's a bit of a defensive posture that allows you to go into something like a roach max, SH, or fairly strong roach/hydra mid game.
2) 1 evo -> hydra/ling. I personally hate roach/ling and try to avoid it as much as possible, instead usually going hydra/ling. A good example of hydra/ling is soO vs. Zest on Polar Night from the GSL finals (can't remember which game). Hydra/ling DESTROYS gateway armies but has very specific weaknesses: colossus and archon/chargelot. In this case, I think it's still good to have a safety roach warren so that you can flood roaches later if need be. It also allows you a lot of super powerful lair busts to take down the Protoss third (as hydra/ling trades well with gateway units).
3) 2 evo -> roach/hydra. A greedier variant of roach/ling where you just hope your opponent isn't attacking early. This can work okayish on larger maps, but can be difficult to pull off. The upside is that you can hit a brutal 2/2 maxed out timing with roach/hydra/corruptor at like 13:00.
4) 2 evo -> double upgraded lings. This is becoming a fairly popular one, especially since soO uses it so much. The idea behind this style is that your lings give you total map control early on and help you completely shut down any pressure before it begins (which in turn allows your economy to continue on without any problems). Unfortunately, it's a little weaker to later all-ins such as 2-2-2 or archon/chargelot allins. However, against most early pressure, it's pretty safe and allows you get into whatever lair tech you desire. Most of the time, I've seen a muta/corruptor followup, but then again, it was also soO playing.
5) No upgrades -> straight to tech. Fairly rare. Most of the time this is used for mutalisks. You build just enough lings/roaches to survive any pressure and save up all the gas you possibly can to throw out like 15 mutalisks at once. Not much to say other than it works fairly well against very passive robo builds but fairly bad against everything else.
Hope that helps!
|
How do you guys hotkey your army? I usually use 1 for lings, 2 for banes and 3 for Mutas. I've seen pros hotkey all lings and banes on 1. Isn't this inefficient?
|
United States4883 Posts
On May 01 2014 09:52 Dynamitekid wrote: How do you guys hotkey your army? I usually use 1 for lings, 2 for banes and 3 for Mutas. I've seen pros hotkey all lings and banes on 1. Isn't this inefficient?
You should always hotkey what's comfortable for you.
That said, I prefer to just keep all my ling/bling on one hotkey so that I can use the other for counterattacks. When I engage, I simply box a group of lings, move command them forward (to draw widow mine fire), then CTRL + click the banelings and micro them individually. If it helps you to have them hotkeyed separately, the by all means, go for it!
|
Recently I was ahead of a 2 base toss economically, and he got a 120 supply-ish army of 4 colossi, 2 phoenix, a core and the rest stalkers. With equal upgrades and 4 hatches making larva, I couldn't fight that army. What do I need to do in terms of composition and positioning to beat it in a fight? I don't have a replay handy but I may be able to get it soon.
|
United States4883 Posts
On May 01 2014 11:10 MonkeyBot wrote: Recently I was ahead of a 2 base toss economically, and he got a 120 supply-ish army of 4 colossi, 2 phoenix, a core and the rest stalkers. With equal upgrades and 4 hatches making larva, I couldn't fight that army. What do I need to do in terms of composition and positioning to beat it in a fight? I don't have a replay handy but I may be able to get it soon.
Either a complete surround with roach/hydra or roach/hydra/corruptor should be good. It helps if you engage on his side of the map or the center. As long as you can kill off the colossus, most of the firepower in the composition is gone and you can just remax on roaches. A replay would help, of course.
|
|
|
|