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Zerg Guide:Tips, Advice, and Tricks For ZvP AND ZvT! (Macro Style)
Hi, my name is Shawn Simon. Some of you may know me better as ChOseN or Sheth. I’ve been playing SC1 and SC2 competitively at high levels for a while now. I thought I would write a sort of general advice page here. If you have any questions or tips for me feel free to leave them as comments. Now to the information!
New Information:
I'm adding in a ZvT guide with a few more interesting tricks. I'm going to compartmentalize it as well as I can with spoilers. Whoever wants to see the new infrormation please click the spoiler below! (If Mods could please adjust the title of this thread to Zerg Sheth's Guide I would appreciate it!)
+ Show Spoiler [*NEW* ZvT Guide!!] +ZvT Guide!+ Show Spoiler [ZvT Openings!] +ZvT (In General Terms!) [Part 1: OPENINGS]
There are so many different ways to play the beggining of ZvT. In this I liken it to a chess game that to start there are only several viable openings.
The three I'd like to cover are 14 Drones --> Hatchery and then 13 Drones --> Pool |||| 14 Pool 15 Hatchery (Read 14 Drones -->Pool, and 15 Drones --> Hatchery.||| And 13 Pool 13 Vespene. Each of these have their benefits, and suit a specific play style. 14 Hatchery the first build order caters to those who want an early game advantage and are presuming that their opponent isn't planning on doing a powerful rush early on. Those who go 14 pool 15 hatchery there are several tricks to this, but the basic premise behind this is you want to prevent any early pressure that the Terran might use and to gain a fairly strong macro position. The 13 pool 13 vespene build is specificly designed to give you early pressure and dictate the early game at the cost of macro.
First of all lets focus on the 14 Hatchery and 13 Spawning Pool build order. This is a favorite of mine in far positions. Certain maps like steppes and kulas make this build order very hard to do though. Steppes has such a close base position that the terran can simply attack early with several marines and scvs and possibly do a huge ammount of damage. Kulas Ravine has so many ways to do early harass to a quick expo that this sort of build is so risky. (Think reapers on the cliff!) However on maps like Lost temple and Metalopolis this map can work solidly. Your oponent won't scout early enough to prevent this expo (generally) and you can macro early while scouting and preventing any early harassment.
Now to talk about what to do after you go 14 Hatchery! This is where things can start diverging, and you have to decide certain things... A solid build order in this situation of cross positions on either metal or lost temple would be to make 15 Drones then an Overlord. So 15 Overlord 15 Zergling 16 Queen is solid.
After you have finished the build order up to 16 queen your overlord should be just finishing. When the 2 zerglings you have made come out its wise to send at least one of these to the front of your opponents base. You should ALWAYS have a zergling inbetween your base and your opponents. This is the best way to figure out if your opponent is simply fake attacking or charging your base for real. Good terrans will simply step outside of their base and attempt to destroy this zergling and then just go back in. Its important that you recognize this tactic for what it is and not make plenty of spine crawlers without a good reason. Now after you have made 16 queen it is smart to simply produce drones.
Now if your hatchery is almost done say 90% finished you can start sending 3-4 drones over right away. Theres no need to wait for your hatchery to be completely finished before sending over drones. Depending on your opponents build order it is wise to not build a spine crawler just yet. You can make 2-4 zerglings in this middle time and keep them on creep. To continue the build order it would go something along the lines of 18 drone 19 drone 20 drone 21 vespene 20 queen (This one should be made at your second hatchery) Why not make this queen earlier? When you fast expo like this you will have enough larva that you won't need to spit or it will just give you extra larva that will set and wait. This is a topic that is up for debate but its what I've been prefering of late.
Its very important to continue scouting here. Send those 2-4 zerglings to go run up your opponents ramp and to run back. If he has a barracks with a reactor core then you can geuss hes going to simply transfer a factory over onto that and go hellions. With this build order its important to keep a queen on the ramp and to have at least one spinecrawler. The idea then behind this build order is that if you can prevent this hellion harassment and continue to build drones and tech (speed or lair) you should be ahead of your opponent who is still running off of one base. I will go more into vs. hellions later on however for now I'm just talking about this opening and how to get to this point of macro vs. macro and defending. So if you know your opponent isn't a very early rush styled player this strategy will give you the best early game macro boost. However if your opponent is constantly reaper rushing or if your just not sure it can be very wise to not take the chance. In tournament games go with what you feel, as corny as that sounds it generally works.
Now lets discuss how you could properly do a 14 pool 15 hatchery build order! This is my favorite because it offers a mix of both worlds. It can either provide early pressure on your opponent or give you a solid macro middle game. The point behind this build order is to get a first queen early and tranfer it to your second base while making several zerglings to stop your opponent from scouting and safely expand. So after you have 14 pooled 15 hatcheried you will want to drone up while taking a fairly early gas. So to continue the build you would go 15 overlord 15 queen 17 zergling and wait until the overlord is finished. Then you can either make several more zerglings (no more then 6 though unless hes rushing!)and then make drones. You will want to take that first queen and spit on your first hatchery and move it over to your expansion RIGHT away. Spit and walk. Also right whenever your first queen pops out you will have enough minerals to make a second one. This timing works out well and you can continue to make drones or zerglings.
After you have around 20 population here you should start to make a vespene geyser. You will want to either make speedlings or roaches at this point. (Unless its LT and then its smart to take a lair first, but we'll go into that later!) Roaches are a solid idea if you think your opponent is going hellion and speedlings are viable if you enjoy micro and think your opponent will be agressive with his hellions. so the point of this build was simply to have a few early lings to stop the scout, to prevent the early reaper or marine rush and to keep a solid macro up while scouting early. (With the first lings)
Now onto our final build order in early ZvT. 13 pool 13 vespene. This build is my favorite to use on on cheesey maps. If your opponent just finshed 8 raxing you two games in a row this build order will be a good counter. With this build you won't expand until you have lings to defend. With this build order you can cheese or expand. To expand and play a macro game with early speedlings (meant for fighting and surrounding early hellions) you should continue the build order as follows. 14 overlord 14 zergling 15 zergling 16 queen (Those should all be made right when your pool is finished). Then whenever you have 100 gas take the 3 workers off of gas and make speed. After you have made speed you can send a drone to your expansion and start to make your hatchery. To continue; 18 drone 19 drone 19 hatchery 19 zerglings and continue to make zerglings. At a certain point when the second hatchery is at around 65% its smart to take one last spit at your main hatchery with your queen and start moving him to your expansion while making a second queen at your main hatchery. Here you should be able to continue making just enough zerglings to kill hellions that attack you. You can either put a spine crawler at your natural and wait until the hellions charge and then jump on them as they are entering your natural or main or try and put slightly earlier pressure. They both have their benefits and negatives which we'll discuss later in middle game.
To turn this build order into a baneling bust, simply watch a dimaga game (several on the Day9 King of the Beta Hill Tournament). To use roaches to cause an early push you can adapt this slightly. Roaches this early are good to suprise your opponent. The build order to use roaches would be the same up until your at 18/18. After then simply don't get speed and make a roach warren and continue to make drones after you have your first 4-6 zerglings. Use these zerglings and your queen to prevent the scv your opponent sent to scout the roach warren. Never build the warren when your opponent is still in your base with that scv. Continue to make drones until 20-22. At 20-22 you should make an overlord and then wait. You should be saving up around 300 minerals and 125+ gas for when the larva comes down from the hatchery via your queen's spit. Then just make them all roaches and proceed to lay waste to the dominion!
So, those are my favorite three early game build orders vs. terran. They each have a unique style and its good to mix them up and see which you prefer. Or use your own, either way have fun with it! + Show Spoiler [ZvT Middle Game!] +ZvT Middle Game
MIDDLE GAME (HELLIONS/ BANSHEES / MARAUDERS OH MY!)
I consider the middle game to be the part in the game where you have your expansion up and some drones. Your opponent will also have a tech tree hes working on and your goal is to counter his with your own. Here were going to discuss several of the most popular T middle game harasses. The three most common build orders a terran will use are Hellions (Dropships, Ignite, Expansion), Banshees (Cloak or No?), and Marauder Hellion Marine (Expansion or Pressure). (At least those are the three I've been playing the most lately)
Hellions Hellions and more Hellions! (Reactor core Build orders and more)
You have just scouted your opponent and you see he has a reactor core attached to his factory and hes going to be making hellions! OMG TIME TO PANIC! Run outside and scream away these nightmare machines! On a more serious note you shouldn't panic! You will simply want to retreat any zerglings you have into your natural base and plant down a spine crawler. You will want to put your zerglings on top of the ramp leading into your main base. You will want a certain number of zerglings / spine crawlers in relation to the ammount of hellions. I find that 1 spine 1 queen and 12 zerglings are perfect for anything up to 4 hellions. At 6 hellions it can be helpful to either add 8 more zerglings or another spine crawler. If you have speedlings you won't need quiet as many and you can attempt to surround so much easier. Your goal against this build order is just to get enough zerglings that you can either prevent this attack or you can attack the hellions he is making surround them, kill them, and then prevent him from expanding until he makes a whole new batch of hellions. If he makes anywhere from 8-10 hellions basically you will need to use waves of zergling in concert with your spine crawlers and queens to prevent this harassment.
You should have your lings spaced out on top of your ramp and several inside your minerals of your expansion. This will allow you to come from different directions and surround the hellions and keep them from destroying your drones. While your opponent is making hellions you should be mixing in drones with this zergling defense and attempting to tech to lair. Its important that you get to lair to put pressure right back on the terran. By making a spire or a roach warren you will be able to keep these hellions from preventing you from taking a third base and you can make him make some defense, be it thors vs. mutas or tanks vs. roaches. Once you have destroyed his big ball of hellions you are free to roam the world with your zerglings again so don't forget to put some lings in front of the terran's base and to keep zerglings on xel'naga towers! Taking a third and making again just enough to defend without losing your drones is the best way to defeat this line of hellions.
Hellions with ignite, time to fight! (Factory with Tech lab)
You have just seen your opponent make a hellion and he has a tech lab! What why didn't he make a tank or a thor even! But no he has made a hellion and you can tell hes going to try and mess you up with blue flames. There are several ways to fight this. One way that you can use is listed above in the Hellions Hellions and more Hellions section. However I believe there is a better way to deal with this if hes using a tech add on.
You will have to make a roach warren and a few spine crawlers (2 or so) until your roaches arrive. Your goal here is to make 5-6 roaches to wall off either your ramp or keep the hellions away from your mineral line. You should simply keep him out and you can even attempt to pressure him back with 4-5 roaches. The time he spends micro'ing his hellions against your roaches will be time that he isn't attacking your drones and you can macro in this time. He will generally have to make at least 1 marauder or tank to prevent the roaches from then breaking into his main and you will have stopped him from making too many blue flame hellions. If he however conitnues to make hellions (6-8?) just keep making these roaches and drones. You should be able to prevent him from expo'ing at the least and preventing him from killing your economy.
Hellions Ready to Drop! (Factory with a Starport with no add-on)
As if hellions with ignite or 4 quick hellions wasn't pain enough your opponent has a way to completley bypass your spinecrawlers and to put them down where they want! If your opponent doesn't have ignite with his hellions it can be wise to simply have your queen try and chase around the dropship while you try and surround the hellions with zerglings. Anything to keep them from your drones! You will want to damage the hellions enough that they have to leave or the same with the dropship. If however your opponent has ignite this can be very difficult. I would recomend getting roaches for this build like I mentioned above. You would want to keep some of those roaches above your ramp to stop them from running in and simply move them over to your main base and try and keep your drones alive! NEVER EVER highlight all of your drones and run them all away in a line. That is the worst possible reaction and the hellions will stare and smile as they cannot believe their own luck before they completely ruin your entire game! Move your drones by 3-4's to seperate areas and keep them from clumping if you can. Try and focus fire down the hellions as well its alot harder to flame drones down with 2 hellions compared with 4 half health hellions. These are the baisc options you have for how to prevent Hellions from ruining your day.
Banshees! Weeeee! (Do i see a Banshee? Nope because my eyes are closed cringing!)
You see a starport and it has a techlab! I will be honest and say that this is the build order I have the most dificulty with. A small tip, be extra careful with terrans in tournament games, banshees are something that they think you won't expect in an important game. Now how to deal with this! There are several schools of thought here. Queens and only queens, spore crawlers with 1-2 queens, or queens with a fast lair and spores. I personally think that its important to continually make queens from 1 base while you tech up your other hatchery as quick as you can for an oveerseer. Its also smart to build an evolution chamber if you have seen it in enough time. You can put 1-2 spores in each base as little towers for your queens to retreat to if the banshees disapear. Its important to use w/e zerglings you have to try and prevent an expo by the terran while he is harassing with banshees. If you can manage to kill off the banshees or at the very least prevent them from doing to high of a tole in drones and queens you should come out ahead. I think its very important to leave a spore behind each mineral line to prevent the terran mindset that if they keep the banshees alive they can come back whenever they want for 2-3 drone kills while you move your queen to that awkward position.
Banshees with Cloak! What a joke! (Banshees with Cloak obv... Starport with Tech Lab)
I think that you will have to either A. start your lair before you did your speedlings and very very early or B. make plenty of spore crawlers to stop this build order. Following the same logic as you would in a BW game you should continue to fend off these wrait.. banshees while teching to either mutalisks or hydralisks. Sometimes its wise to get a few hydralisks while still teching to spire to simply throw off the Terran. Once you have managed to live through these cloacked units by queen/spore crawler defensing your base you will need something with mobility to allow you to take a third base. You will have to either send 2-3 hydras with an overseer or some mutas to an expansion to protect it from any lingering banshees just waiting to pick off unsuspecting drones. Your drones will thank you for this! If you are losing all the drones at a base while making queens, its wise to move all of your drones to the base below. Its slightly harder for a banshee to kill a drone thats running then one that is standing still. Its very difficult to deal with this build orders in the hands of a sneaky terran, but you can do it!
Middle Game Topics that I havn't broughten up because I'm not intending to write a novel entitled: Why Sheth ended his life after writing a 330 page SC2 guide for people on TeamLiquid.net. (Early Marauder attack, 10+ Reapers of death, scv marine attack ball and THOR ATTACK)
If your opponeent is planning on attacking you with marauders its wise to make many speedzerglings and a few spine crawlers to defend this. If he has hellions with it its still the best choice you can make to make plenty of speedlings. However if he has 4-6 hellions you will definetly want to focus them down first and perhaps get roaches to balance this. You will want to simply beat back this attack and you should be ahead economically. 10 reapers all racing to your base? A line of ling killing death? Little do they know you have 4-5 roaches just waiting for them. Try and geuss where they will fly up and be waiting for them with either roaches and lings or just PLENTY of lings and a queen. You will want to guard your natural with at least one spine crawler. If you can hold these off with roaches and prevent them from getting into your drones you should come out ahead, because roaches are viable in late game armies, where as reapers are pretty much just a fork broughten to a knife fight. (Useless unless your with indians and a canoe)
In order to fight a scv marine ball early on its smart to simply make as many zerglings as you can with queens. If you can sneak the zerglings behind the scvs and directly attack the marines yolu should be safe. Thor attacks are difficult to deal with as are Thor drops. Thors in mass are very difficult to deal with, if T has alot of hellions as back up. I'd recomend spine crawlers roaches and speedlings to deal with this composition early game. And focus fire the roaches onto a single Thor when they attack. + Show Spoiler [ZvT End Game!] +ZvT End Game (Theres so much more I could have written down, but I figured I'd start small.. kind of!)
End Game == Army Composition (LOLOLOLOLOL My 200 IS BIGGER THEN YOURS!)
The biggest complaint most zerg's seem to have is that they can reach 200/200, however their army melts in the face of an equal or smaller terran army! I'm here to explain several tips and tricks on how to beat any and every composition the terran can throw at you. The most dangerous terran's will learn that they never need to leave their base and can simply turtle up to 200/200. You will have to fight for your life to stop this, but it is possible.
I'm not the best at it I'll admit, however there are ways to stop it. However there are plenty of end game things before we reach this point. The three topics I'd like to focus on here are how to deal with an army of Medivacs, Marines, Marauders and and Tanks || an army of Tanks Thors Hellions and Vikings || an army of pure Marines Marauders and Medivacs.
MMM (Marines Marauders Medivacs) and Tanks. (Sounds like a delicious candy, however zergs cannot eat this...)
There are several armies and different types of compositions that are viable to fight this. I'm going to always be assuming that you both have a 200/200 army ready to fight. In order to deal with this perfectly I believe that with 2 Infestors, 20 Banelings, 20 Roaches 20 Hydralisks and zerglings. (AKA Keep the banelings roaches and hydralisk in proportion) you will be able come out ahead. Your goal is to fungal the marines and have your banelings in a seperate group. You will need to click 1A (1 is your hotkey with Roaches Hydralisks and Zerglings)and then 2click (2 is your group of banelings.) In order to explain this fully we'll have to go into Positioning, Upgrades, and Timing. Positionining and timing are very similar. In order to get a good position you will want your roaches and hydralisks to have a large enough arch that they can spread out completely. You will only want to attack on creep. You won't want to attack where your entire army will attack at different places (like you got split) You will have to make sure your infestors have just fungal growthed previously to you attacking. (Fungal then 1a 2click quickly!)
Upgrades are fairly simple. NEVER attack if your upgrades are almost finished. Wait for your 2-2 to finish if its at 85% instead of just attacking at 1-1. Also be careful that you don't get out upgraded, because in the end game upgrades will make or break a game completely. Then timing! Its important that you attack at an opportune time. This is close hand in hand with positioning. You will want to attack at just the time when he is slightly out of position. When all of his tanks are positioned behind his army on a cliff, you shouldn't attack. Wait for him to bring the tanks to a harder position to defend. Also be ready to attack if he unseiges tanks. The INSTANT he unseiges if you can attack it will be best. Its important that you keep overlords or a changeling near his army to gain this intel. Then simply whittle down his army and attempt to destroy his ball of death. This army composition I gave you was the simplest to micro and possibly the most cost efficient. However no matter how you crack it, this 200/200 terran army is very very hard to deal with.
Another viable option is to mix in Ultralisk Zergling Roach and Infestor. Any combination 200/200 of this can do well against this if your ultralisks go in first and dont' get stuck. If you have 10,000 /10,000 (10,000 minerals and 10,000 gas) the best combinatoin I find you can make is pure Corrupters and Brood lords. Brood lords are extremely effective however you have to make sure you can keep your Corrupters in a high ammount at least equal to the ammount of his Vikings. Also these marines can tear through Broodlords Very VERY quickly, so you should make sure you have a solid ammount. Sending a few Broodlings into his army of infantry while his tanks are seiged can completely devistate his ground army so this is a wise tactic. Also sending 2-3 broodlords to an expansion and attacking from behind a cliff or in open air is a strong tactic. While this will take plenty of practice and plenty of games to work with, I feel like there are possibilities to beat this MMM + Tanks.
The Mech Wreck (Tanks Thors Hellions Vikings)
This army is a maelstom of extremely deadly fighting units. I find the best way to fight this ball is to never fight it. To simply whittle it away with drops, broodlords and large armies is the best way I can find. You can make a pure corrupter / broodlord army to fight this if its done perfectly. You will need plenty of minerals and gas and it never hurts to keep an infestor with your purely flying army to simply fungal growth his army of vikings if they ever stray to far forward. This sort of turtle with mech units is a very strong play style and I havn't come up with that many ideas to completely defeat it, but early and middle harass can prevent this ball from getting too big. Constantly tech switching, constant harass, nydus worms and dropships are your best bet. However play a perfect game.. and you still might lose.. terran in this style is extremely strong.
Bio Ball (So many Marines and Marauders and Medivacs your head will spin)
This is by far the easiest army to defeat. Zerglings Mutalisks Banelings and an infestor or to can tear this apart so fast you won't have time to blink. If you manage to stop the marines from running away by means of a fungal growth and then run the banelings in, your mutas will be able to push in and destroy whats left. The micro required for this with large armies can be taxing, but after you have died a few times to it you kind of get an idea of how to deal with this play. I feel like this is the weakest of the three I mention here so I won't spend so much time talking about it. Simply keep upgrades in mind, and work towards a complete army of banelings + mutas with 1-2 infestors. And keep plenty of larva on hand for if you do end up dieing to this ball!
As a zerg player your initial goal is to start ahead of your opponent in expoes. So let’s discuss ZvP. There is a lot of information for all levels of players, so if the opening paragraph is too simple or too complicated please take the time to read a little more. Thanks!
+ Show Spoiler [ZvP Guide] ++ Show Spoiler [ZvP Openings] + ZvP (In General Terms!) [PART 1: OPENINGS]
There are plenty of different opening build orders to try in Zerg vs. Protoss. To start with let’s talk about rally points. As a zerg player you have two different rally points from your initial hatchery. When using the larva rally point I like to look at where the egg is positioned in relation to the minerals and put the rally point to a mineral patch that is closest to the egg. That way whenever the egg morphs into a drone and heads to a mineral patch it will be quickly done. The different starting build orders for zerg to start are 9 Overlord 10 Drone and then wait, 10 Overlord 10 Extractor 11 Drone. I believe both of these to be slightly superior to simply 10 Overlord. I won’t go into which of those two is slightly better, but I generally enjoy doing the extractor trick to keep my fingers going during this time.
Positions in ZvP are extremely important. I’m going to discuss positions in relation to the maps we’ve already played with Beta. On Steppes of War you have fairly close positions. When at these positions it is not beneficial to make a 14 hatchery before pool. This is a very RISKY build. The reason that is too risky to try is twofold. One a protoss will invariably scout you with his probe and perhaps block your expansion from being made anywhere near on time. The second reason is that if the protoss made a 9 or 10 gateway slightly outside of his base and decides to rush you, there is very little (read nothing) that you can do to prevent your hatchery from going down. So on maps where you KNOW that your going to be in close positions with a protoss its best to go some variation of spawning pool into hatchery at your expansion.
Maps that you know you will be in a close positions include Steppes, Burning, and Incineration. On Lost Temple and Metalopolis you can also get close positions so be careful.
On several maps you might think it would be ok to get a hatchery first, but with the ability to forge and pylon wall your small ramp I find it difficult to endorse this build order!
I would like to cover my favorite build fairly completely and not go into other builds I’m not as comfortable with. I know this is fairly bias, but its a lot to write! I prefer going 13 pool 13 gas 15 overlord 16 drone and then producing some zerglings and upgrading speed whenever you get 100 gas.
*Important note – When you have 100 gas for speed you should take the 3 drones on gas off of gas and put them back on minerals for the time being.
The reasoning behind this is very simple. I feel like trying to take an expansion before you have zerglings out to assist is very risky. If a protoss decides to put a probe in the way and micro it it is very difficult to place your hatchery down at a good timing. By getting zergling speed and then getting some zerglings early you won’t have to attempt to take your hatchery early because you won’t have the minerals. When the zerglings pop out you can then send them to harass and kill the probe and make an expansion. You could do this without zergling speed, however thats not the build we're going to discuss here.
If you have seen with your overlord (which should be sent to your opponents base initially in ZvP) that he is playing with 1 gateway inside of his base with a blocked in wall you can simply use your zerglings to kill off his probe and you should make only drones after this point for a while. This way you can try and catch your economy up to his and you can try and use your zerglings at his front to gain some scouting information. Its important to use your zerglings wisely early. They are in affect your ghost recon team. They will let you know A. how many zealots is he getting? B. Do I see any other buildings within range of my zerglings at the front.
Around the time your overlord sees a cybernetics core being finished it is wise to remove your overlord from their base. If you can find any area with a cliff nearby your opponents base it is good to put it there. Anywhere you can gain some intel while keeping your overlord alive is a good idea. In ZvP you can also keep your overlord slightly off of the cliff so you can see more. The reason for this is that 5-6 shots from a stalker won’t kill an overlord so if RIGHT when you see either a stalker or a sentry coming out of the base you can move your overlord back on top of the cliff. I generally keep the overlord hot keyed so I can move it out of the way quickly. (Don’t know what a hotkey is? Feel free to ask in this thread!)
What if your opponent didn’t go 1 base with some sort of wall in? Let’s see what other “Normal” builds they could have went. If your opponent went for a forge outside of his base it is easy to tell he is going to try and fast expand. A good goal I have with this is to make around 8 zerglings with this speed upgrade and to check for holes in the protoss’ wall. If the protoss doesn’t completely wall of the area into his base it is possible for u to run those zerglings by the cannons and into his main base. If he has completely walled off his base you can keep him from scouting. He may have to make extra defence because he can’t be sure that your not attempting a baneling bust. (What is a baneling bust? Watch a random Dimaga Replay!) It is always good to keep a zergling outside of the protoss’ base so you can see if he is sending a probe or a zealot to scout you. (Don’t know what a zealot is? *cry*) if he attempts to scout you must be quick on the uptake and use your zerglings to destroy that probe. I usually keep my group of initial zerglings hotkeyed as well for this. I won’t go into exactly which numbers I use to hot key because everyone has a different opinion on hotkeys. Day9’s advice on hotkeys was great. Make them inidividually for you so that if your clicking s or z a lot keep it near your hatchery hotkeys. (For whatever letter it’s good to keep it near the number)
From this point you should have an expo up with several zerglings and your opponent should be getting his expo up as well. It’s important that you make your first queen at the same time as your first zerglings. This allows you to make a second queen from your first hatchery and move your other queen over to your second hatchery before it is finished. This way you will have queens ready to spit up on hatcheries by the time their finished building.
What if your opponent went for a fast 1 gate outside of his base or even 2 gates outside of his base and attempts to rush you with zealots? I find this to be the most popular pvz build at the moment followed by attempting to fast expand. I love going 13 pool because these initial zerglings + your first queen can provide a solid defence vs. a rush. You will be able to get your zerglings out in time to defend your hatchery if you properly micro. Don’t be afraid to let your hatchery take some damage from a probe and a few zealots. You don’t want to attack until you have an advantage. How will you know when you have this advantage? You will have to practice a lot to figure out the exact numbers. In general its best if you have 3-4 zerglings per zealot and 1-2 zerglings per probe. 4 zealots and 1 probe? 20 zerglings will keep you safe and sound in your base. When you get speed finished you will be able to chase the zealots a lot easier and it removes the ability of the protoss to do that annoying zealot step micro. (Zealot step micro is where the zealot moves back a step and hits and moves back a step and repeats) If you can surround the protoss’ zealot early army it is good to do so if you know you have superiority. This ability to chase the zealots back is the main reason I go 13 pool with zergling speed. I feel it allows you to then take a third or macro from your 2 bases very well after you have put that initial pressure on the protoss.
If you allow the protoss to get a lot of zealots, 6,7,8,9,(22?) then you have to be careful about not attacking them when they are in a line. If you cannot surround the zealots with your zerglings it becomes very important to have a ranged unit assisting. You can do this with either early roaches or early spine crawlers. Depending on the timing of the attack you can use queens as well. I prefer to use a combination of spine crawlers with your queen and zerglings to defend. If a zealot gets into a small space where only 1 or 2 zerglings can attack it at a time, it’s wise to bring a queen over to deal with it. If your opponent tries to wall off your small choke leading to your natural it is wise to bring a queen to attack.
What if your opponent goes for a 2 forge early cannon push? Sure your opponent can do some weird ghetto build, but don’t let it freak you out and just play intelligently. When you have prevented any threats he may have had you can continue to build up your economy.
At this point it’s very important to simply make pure drones. You want to continue to grow an economy while slowly getting a lair upgraded and more gas. You will want to keep only 1 gas in your main until you have a generally large amount of drones. When I say generally large amount I’m thinking somewhere around 20 or so drones. You might say WHAT 20 DRONES BEFORE MORE VESPENE GEYSERS ARE YOU CRAZY? The reason for this is that it allows you to remove 3 drones from minerals and put them on gas while still continuing to use all of your larva at both hatcheries . Keeping all larva used and your minerals low is a good mind set. By leaving larva unused you will LOSE some possible larva. When your hatchery has 3 larva it will stop producing any extra larva unless you spit on it, so it is wise to use these larva as soon as you can.
This provides what I believe to be a solid opening strategy for most games against protoss. It leaves you with map control as you will have speed zerglings to prowl and it lets you at least keep even with the amount of economy you have coming in. By keeping a separate overlord around his base you will always have the option to sacrifice into his base so you can see exactly what tech your opponent is going. This is a very important idea to go if your opponent hasn’t shown you any of his tech ideas. If you see plenty of zealots early with sentries it’s wise to make enough defenses for an early push. If you see just zealots you might want to think “what is he spending all that gas on?” If he has fast expanded you can fairly confidently geuss he will go 1 of 3 basic builds. The Stargate, The Gateway Units, or the Mixed Robo Gateway builds.
I never realized quite how much information I had to write on ZvP openings as I did. I will put a few more tricks in bullet form underneath this.
+ Show Spoiler [*NEW* Zerg Tips and Interesting Tricks] +
*(New) If you put 1-2 infestors in your dropship with your army you can do something neat. If you are dropshipping a Terran or Protoss' main base and you run those infestors to the ramp leading up to it quickly you can do something quiet awesome. If you fungal his units as they are coming up his ramp they will be stuck. If you have 1-2 infestors you can effectively keep these units and his entire army from reaching his main base in time to save it! There are ways around it, but I think it will suprise plenty of players. (Rori <3 lol!)
*(New) If you sneakily drop 3 changelings into your opponents base and they can stealth to your opponents ramp you have a cool possibility! Once those changelings are completely blocking the ramp you can commence the dropship. Hopefully your opponent will simply take his army and a click it back to his base. If he has done this his whole army will end up getting stuck at his ramp with no way up and nothing to attack. They will simply be walled off by 2-3 zealots or marines. You can then take your time and destroy his base in peace without the deadly marine or zealot attacks all zerg units fear. If you want to get super sneaky, why not pretend to fungal your changelings, so it looks like his units are the ones stuck by fungal?
*(New) Overseers + Mutalisks This trick is very similar to the one with dropships. You would simply move 2-3 changelings to his ramp and wall it off. You would then attack his main base with your mutalisks and watch his marine army or stalker army get stuck behind a few changelings! This will give you plenty of time to do damage and it could completley suprise and confuse your oppponent!
*(New) Watch out for burrowed banelings in ZvZ!! (Grrrr Slush!)
*If you have your minerals saturated (Saturated is 2 drones on a close patch and 3 on a far patch) then whenever a mineral patch is completely mined out you can take 2-3 drones off of that minerals and send them elsewhere.
*Placing an overlord at ALL possible protoss expansions and spitting creep is a great idea. Placing an overlord at his obvious third base is always a great idea as well if you don’t have the time to place them everywhere.
*Creating a third queen for creep colonies and transfusion can help keep you alive if you’re in trouble and promote the spread of creep.
*It is wise to get either overlord speed or 1 overseer whenever your lair comes up to gain intel on your protoss foe.
*Putting an infested terran at your opponents mineral patch during a fight can hurt their eco a little and is something that might make them look away that critical second.
*Nydus worms are good for harassment, but I believe upgrading overlord drop is just as good or better. The Exception to this rule is for super late game when you have the minerals and gas to spare. Instant Transport is very important then.
* The game is still fairly new and in its early phases, so I'm simply trying to help you with what I know. This works for me at my level of play and although nothing is for sure I hope it helps you
*NEW* I hope you have enjoyed this guide! If you have any questions that you would like answered about Zerg, or oppinions that differ from my own feel free to post them here and I will discuss them with you as soon as possible! I will very likely write a ZvZ guide or finish the ZvP guide next!
I would like to thank the zergs I have played with and watched replays of that have let me get my own unique style. So big shout outs to Catz, Zelniq, Machine, Slush, Suggy, Artosis, Sen and Dimaga!
*New* (Big thanks to those who have helped me edit this large ball of text. For preventing me from saying anything I'll regret, a big thanks goes out to QXC and Artosis! Two great players everyone should watch! Feel free to check out these two links for Artosis Vods, and QXC Twitter. ArtosisTV QXC Twitter!
*New* Also for more Guides, Vods, and Replays of Myself, QXC and others please check out Root Gaming's New Website! I will post the link here whenever it will be up! Look for it this weekend!
*New* Until this is up, I will link you to IccupTv's Ustream account where you can find Vods of myself and other good Z's who implement some of the things I've talked about in my guides. Iccup VOD's HuK v Sheth, Morrow v Sheth
*New* One Last thing... as I keep writing lol, I'm a coach for Gosucoaching.com so if your interested in lessons please check out the website! Both myself and Machine would love to help you! GosuCoaching!
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I still have to read it, but thanks for posting this! Definitely refreshing to see this with the current trend of SC2 threads.
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Some strategic use of bold / more spaces / italics / different size fonts (is that possible) would definitely make it more readable.
Looks good though. Keep it up Sheth. You're da man
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Thanks for the great post. Since I never saw this covered I was wondering what the signs are for a stargate/void ray rush? Do you base this one feel and just get a 3rd queen really fast? Or are there some signs in the protoss play that he could be hiding a hidden stargate. Before the beta was down I had been doing a very early sac ovie but I'm starting to think that isn't the right way.
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As I might be facing you in the second round of a tournament Sheth, thank you for telling me some of your tricks
Nice thread. Always nice to see a top player share some of his thoughts on a match up.
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Thanks Sheth, great guide. It would be great if you wrote some stuff about ZvT, as zergs tend to have different styles in this matchup; it would be interesting to see your take on this MU.
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Hmm. I always opened roaches against toss zealot aggression and expanded once i had about 4 roaches. I don't find speedlings very viable because it's not always easy to get a good surround against zealots. Any opinions on opening roaches instead of speedlings?
The way I see it, it uses exactly the same gas as speed, and costs 450 minerals (that's including the cost of the roach warren), which seems to be about 150 minerals cheaper than lings (20 lings = 500 minerals plus 100 on the speed). But I'm not anywhere close to being a pro gamer, so I'd like to hear the opinion of one
I'd love to see how you handle ZvT, though, especially mech =]
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As I newer zerg I really appreciate threads like this. Apsects of zerg play can be quite subtle and all the more experienced advice is appreciated.
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As a toss player imma read this, find important things about what zerg players gotta do, and stop them from doing so.
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Great job Sheth. I skimmed sort of quickly since most of it didn't pertain to me (it's good that lower level players can understand it). I will be reading it again when I have more time to see how you play ZvP.
You were always a nice guy online. Thanks!
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Man there is no better Zerg in the world to post something like this! If I wasn't a Zerg guide I'd love you even more, but as it stands you are helping the enemies of Auir which is just plain unacceptable!
Will definitely read either way though!
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Great read Sheth. I want to also request your thought on ZvT, especially mech. Also, at what point do you decide to put drones back into first gas after taking them out (after you get your initial lings, natural expo, defended zealout pressure, etc.)?
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That is one in depth guide, awesome work!
What are your thoughts on late game brood lords vs. ultralisks? I'm sorta liking the mobility ultras provides, but brood lords definitely feel very solid.
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Thanks Sheth, awesome guide!
I too love getting ling speed before an expansion, it just feels like I have more options other than just worrying about protecting my base. I can harass, push, etc. based on scouting.
I would definitely love to see a ZvT guide, as I struggle against terran (especially mech) the most.
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Really good guide, is there any replay you would recommend to supplement this?
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It might also be important to note that you shouldn't try to engage zealots with zerglings when the zealots are at a narrow ramp and that the queen shouldn't get off the creep so it can always run back and spit in time. As well to keep the zerglings in place so one or two zerglings don't suddenly aggro the zealots and die. For the newer players ya know. Really nice guide though.
Oh and btw, what do you think about doing the double extractor trick compared to just doing the extractor trick once? When i play zerg (usually 2v2) i go 10 double extractor, 8 drone, 9 drone, 12 overlord and either 12 pool, or make 2 more drones then pool after overlord is done?
Still... PROTOSS FTW!!!!
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amazing guide shawny, great job <3
Pizza-Zerg for life!
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I didn't read it all because there was a lot to read, but it looks like the only thing you recommended was a 13pool 13 gas opening? Versus protoss that sounds kinda stupid. This isn't like SC1 where protoss will always be FEing and speedlings can deal with it. This also isn't SC1 where lings aren't really faster than probes. Those two reasons were good for occasionally doing something like a 12 pool gas in SC1.
For SC2, things are quite different, and getting an early gas and (slightly) early pool like that is going to throw oneself behind on minerals When you get earlier gas and pool, it results in later hatch and economy, resulting in protoss being able to do things like 1 or 2 gate expand (not like a FE though), or just a more effective timed push (4 gate or robo)
I prefer a more traditional oriented build (if you can call any build traditional) 14 pool 15 hatch on close maps, or 15 pool 15 hatch on futher ones, THEN go queen double gas 3 lings cancel 1 gas, then overlord. In fact getting 6 lings is generally unnecessary, and one can just 1-2 extra drones assuming he isn't being offensive. I consider this build more advanced though, since it takes advantage of using hatchery's health as a buffer to get a force, requires drone micro and/or hidden drones to build a hatchery, and reacts to the opponent rather early on. For lower level players, a 13 pool 13 gas seems much more proper/safe, although even then, I'd probably just recommend something like a 13 pool 18-20 hatch then gas instead. I find getting gas before an expo is kinda unnecessary in ZvP, because roaches suck, lings are already pretty fast, and lair takes too much time and money and gas to go for (considering the upgrades one needs to get after the lair). The exception would be doing a 1-base (mostly all-in) build, such as lair tech roach push (kulas ravine, inceneration zone, blistering sands, and potentially scrap station) which is what I might try if there's two gates or a forge outside.
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This guide was very informative. I hope you do more in the future (ZvT ZvZ) and I really hope other gg players follow your initiative and write their own guides on TL.
I have one question related to this quote...
On June 29 2010 05:05 Sheth wrote:
I prefer going 13 pool 13 gas 15 overlord 16 drone and then producing some zerglings and upgrading speed whenever you get 100 gas.
How many zerglings is some zerglings? You mentioned 8 zerglings for "if your opponent went for a forge outside of hise base" Is 8 always your standard number?
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United States2095 Posts
Bensio Thanks :D
Strike, its awesome that you have a blog to help players! It totally depends on the map and the situation. Vs. protoss I generally like broodlords the best in just about any situation. If my opponent has a large pheonix or void ray force I might prefer ultralisks, or if they have too many sentries ultras are exceptional! So its very place / time sensitive, but lately I've been seeing more uses for the great ultralisk!
Fates, Thanks and I'll hopefully work on a ZvT vs. Mech article. (Its tough!!!!)
monkh not right now, I deleted my replay section, but I'll look for one or just make one after beta comes back up.
Interfect that is very true thanks for that! I will update it with that in it. Also I havn't seen many people do two extracters (with the exception of an 8 pool). I don't think it feels natural to me. I havn't seen any reseach on it, or done research on it personally like I have with the other 3 builds I mention so I can't really let you know with any surety.
CatZ Thanks Paulo <3!
Xapti Let me seperate these two posts and make 1 just for ur question cuz it requires some explanation!
Nairul depending on the builds I try and make just enough to defend there offense or just enough to make them make alot of defence. I know thats not super informative so I'll try and be more explanatory. I continue to make zerglings non-stop if I see the protoss with 1 gateway and no other buildings, I will continue to make zerglings non-stop if I see the p with 2 gateways. If the protoss has started a forge along with his gate then I might make just enough to defend the zealots that hes already produced, but I won't continue to make them because usually he will then be planning on defending and not attacking too much.
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Awesome, thanks Sheth, always a baller.
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United States2095 Posts
Xapti, this post is all for you ;p If you had read a bit more maybe you would have found some of the reasoning behind why I do this, but I'll explain it a little more in depth.
You said "For SC2, things are quite different, and getting an early gas and (slightly) early pool like that is going to throw oneself behind on minerals"
I find this to be extremely in accurate. Lately more and more protoss' have been intelligent enough to simply leave their probe at the zerg's natural. This no matter how u do it, doesn't allow you to get a hatchery until you have zerglings out. If you do something like 14 pool this will end up being a 18/19 hatchery. If you do a 15 pool, it might even be a 21/22 hatchery. (Don't forget protoss can simply put a pylon down!) This will completely destroy the ammount of minerals you have. You will have way too many minerals. To avoid that execsive ammount I do this pool with speed build. You might be thinking then why not just go 13 pool and not get the gas and speed. Thats a possibility, but I believe the speed allows me to deal with early zealot harass well. At higher levels 10 gate zealot harass can cause SERIOUS problems for a zerg that goes simply 13 pool. (Especially on close positions!) The speed allows surround much easier, and you can put quicker pressure on the protoss once you have stopped it.
I wasn't by any means only talking about when protoss goes FE first. You would have definitely figured that out if you had read more! :D Also the important note I have up top says that after the drones get 100 gas they go back on minerals. This allows you to get all the minerals you need to have a proper amount of drones or zerglings and queens depending on what you need for early game.
Also notice how I didn't call your build stupid
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On June 29 2010 07:47 Xapti wrote: I didn't read it all because there was a lot to read, but it looks like the only thing you recommended was a 13pool 13 gas opening? Versus protoss that sounds kinda stupid.
Come on, man. You say you didn't read it, then you say he only recommends one thing, and then you say that one thing is stupid. That's the triple crown of useless comments. "I didn't read it, so I'll assume everything after the first sentence was fluff. And oh yeah--that first sentence was pure shit!"
Take 3 minutes and read the freaking post before you spend 10 minutes typing up why you think it's stupid!
Good post Sheth. I was a mid-level diamond P before close of beta, and PvZ was by far my strongest match-up because I knew how to make Z players pay for reaching for that fast expo before they could defend it. My builds would have been quite weak against a fast zergling speed into expand, but fortunately, I almost never ran into that. Here's hoping this won't change following your post!
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A lot of good info in here but its hard to parse.
Would be much better if you fixed the layout.
It should be like
basic points about zvp: .....
Build: Speedling build blah blah Why? Blah blah
Toss openings 2 gate/1 gate forge: blah blah
1 base: blah blah cyber core
other points: ...
midgame plan:
The guide is good but you kinda go all over the place bouncing back and forth.
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Artosis
United States2135 Posts
nice!^^ especially like the tips at the end. except the infested terran one. that ones stupid. :D
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Thank you for the guide, good stuff in it You said in your article that if he goes fast forge + cannon in his natural and tries to fast expand you should do lings and try to poke in (or protoss fast expand in general). How do you feel instead of trying to find a whole to squeeze in, you just double expand and power like crazy? Of course have to be careful and know when to stop powering and just make tons of lings and spines to prepare for his push. I have seen machine doing this against WhiteRa in their matches.
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On June 29 2010 09:50 Artosis wrote: nice!^^ especially like the tips at the end. except the infested terran one. that ones stupid. :D
WOW BM! 'Dan' that tip was mad cool, especially cause you can use TWO! infested terrans and probably kill a good 4 or so workers, it sounds sick, ima have to try it!
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If I see everyone playing like Sheth once the game is out again, I will hunt you down. =(
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United States2095 Posts
Kcdc Thanks alot for the support!!
Slayer91, thanks for the constructive criticism. I tried to bunch it up by topics, at first is early tips (10ol extract + 9ol) and then it went into my build order (13pool 13 gas) and then it went into the three or so different openings the protoss could go. Followed by the little tips at the end. Maybe next time I'll put nice headers or something in between.
Dan, Thanks <3
Piski, Yes I really like to do that too. Thats why I tried to say "PURE DRONES" at one point, so the zerg can start possibly taking a 3rd and macro'ing up a storm. Machine has definetly been a huge inspiration to me in ZvP.
Catz, LoL <3
Antimage, There shall be one thousand Sheth's, you will never know when a new Sheth will appear. And you will always wonder if its the real Sheth. Will the real slim Sheth please stand up?.... And I will never stand up.
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Kind of off-topic, but what does zealot step micro accomplish? Can you hit and step back before the zergling gets its second attack off, thereby effectively evening out zealot and zergling rate of attack?
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On June 29 2010 10:45 kcdc wrote: Kind of off-topic, but what does zealot step micro accomplish? Can you hit and step back before the zergling gets its second attack off, thereby effectively evening out zealot and zergling rate of attack?
Prevents the Zealots from getting surrounded.
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agreed with the making some lings early on. most competent players know zerg will expand at every opportunity. every second u delay the natural with a worker is golden especially since drones are the weakest ones of all. against toss, it takes a long long time to get rid of a probe with just drones.
u sac a bit of early econ to get those lings but once u get them with speed, toss has to always be ready for ling run bys. even getting 4 lings into the toss main can suck a lot -.-. plus once u get the queen out, u can make massive amount of drones w/e u wanna macro. priority should be to not die instead of trying to be greedy with the early expansion imo.
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nice post, although you only really covered how to survive a zealot rush (by going 13pool and massing speedlings). While this works well, and you will rarely die you also won't advance in a good position into the lategame unless they go all in so you should have also explain the advantages of going 15pool or 14hatch (I guess where our styles diverge, I never 13pool :p). Considering that most tosses do some sort of early zealot harrassment, knowing how to defend it is important, especially when they will follow up with an expo + cannons right after on most maps. A spine crawlers and queens with transfusion can work wonders against later zealot rushes, and not waste larvae on lings (not to mention having 5 spine crawlers is awesome in the midgame to push), although in SC2 I don't find myself running out of larvae that often.
I really like the part about not going early hatchery of steppes of war, a lesson I didn't learn until the end of beta and cost me MANY games.. On this map you can only really do a pool before 14 or die to the innevitable zealot rush.
nice guide chosen <3
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Wow awesome guide Sheth. Thanks so much. I really appreciate when big name players such as yourself take the time to help out the sc2 community (I'm sure everyone else on tl.net appreciates it too).
I was rank 1 diamond in my division for a while (not that it means much anyways), and I still found this really helpful. It would be great to hear your perspective for ZvZ and ZvT. Thanks again.
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Really nice guide, I dont play zerg but good read nonetheless
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United States2095 Posts
truceji Thanks bud.
Ostojiy yea I wasn't saying your build was worse or anything, just that I'm only really familiar with how to prevent things like 2 gate and 1 gate early pushes with 13 pool. (I've tried so many games vs. a great protoss while going 15 pool and I'll die if its remotely close positions no matter what!) However if there is no rush its definetly a nice macro build, however I would argue that my build order can lead to a nice mid game and end game macro advantage as well.
Thanks bontez, I will definetly work on a ZvT guide next I think!
TheAntZ Glad you read it! =)
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While I can agree with some things I don't agree with getting speed that fast before expanding that is one of the things I don't like about your build but overall seems pretty solid.
You don't need speed to kill the probe blocking your hatchery (to me it seemed like you implied that you need to get speed to stop a probe from blocking your hatch when just 2 lings can do that unless he's doing an aggressive opening then obviously make more hehe).
Good to see you writing a guide though don't really see a lot of these from top players .
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Thank you very much for this guide.. I mean wow I was a platinum player and I never thought about doing 20 drones all on minerals first but now it all makes sense. No wonder some zerg player macro really good. Tnx sheth
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more thank yous
I would love to see a guide to ZvZ especially one that talks about when and how to follow up a baneling opening
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a bit of a mess to read and gives a lot of small info about the early game but isn't comprehensive at all. Basically it says that a good opening is 13 pool with ling speed and then a expansion but when or what exactly it's a bit fuzzy.
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lol what a noobish playstyle :[
User was warned for this post
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Mmh. Sheth, have you ever played against a very (!) skilled 2-gate opening on (even only rather) close positions? Right now I still have to see a hatch (after pool) built before speed finishes which doesnt go down _or_ leads to a economic disadvantage. I really don't think you can hold a 15 hatch after pool against this (probably only with losing drones or lots of collecting time). So, you seem to be very confident that you can hold it, and probably you could (even against tester or w/e, even though I still doubt it :-) ), but the "average" gamer could probably not. So, what would you do in his or her stead? Thx
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I am still trying to understand the Zerg race more. and this helped me out a lot! thanks
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Sehth,
What do you think about the idea of still getting a fast 2nd hatchery, but putting it in your main, or just before the ramp?
FTemplar
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On June 29 2010 20:52 naniwa wrote: lol what a noobish playstyle :[ Instead of trolling you might wanna motivate your opinion.
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i like naniwa hes like the euro idra
sheth add a replay pack up imo
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Sheth,
thank you, that was a very nice read. Would share what are the weakest points of the build - i.e. what caused you the most losses? It would help to concentrate some special attention to those moments.
I think this tends to be often tricky:
On June 29 2010 05:05 Sheth wrote: I love going 13 pool because these initial zerglings + your first queen can provide a solid defence vs. a rush. You will be able to get your zerglings out in time to defend your hatchery if you properly micro. Don’t be afraid to let your hatchery take some damage from a probe and a few zealots. You don’t want to attack until you have an advantage. So you mean pull the army away, and avoid engaging, until it's enforced to the proper size - I think most new players have a hard time measuring this timing adequately (either engage too early or too late). What do you do as proper ling micro vs zealots? Attack each zealot with 4 lings (is there efficient way to execute this?), or all on one, or just normal ground A-click plus a few focused ones? Do you run away with lings that are low on health, or there's no point / is too hard to execute?
Hope you do the ZvT and ZvZ too, many subtle helpful bits were found here.
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On June 29 2010 20:52 naniwa wrote: lol what a noobish playstyle :[
Lol prove it and play him in the next ITL this Sunday or next Sunday (whenever the beta comes back up).
Sheth already accepted the match. How about you?
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By own experiences, looks pretty accurate. I like that as chosen BO the early 100gas was the pick, with the modern 10gw chrono / 2gw builds being so popular, going for some 15p 15h just doesn't work good enough.
For a while I thought I'd try starting with roaches since lings will become pretty bad in lategame while roaches don't, but the early gas mining thing is actually HUGE. Taking the gasminers out makes such big difference, so you actually lose eco by trusting early defense on roaches instead of gain late advantage when you end up mining 200+ gas instead of round 100. The pre-hat gas for speed and then drones off seems like the standard eco/safe build for zvp.
I might've nagged on how guide about almost only early BO isn't worth posting, but for zvp it pretty much equals most knowledge you'll need. Once you've managed to go for your max drone amount, til the point where you start making more units than drones. It's actually pretty simple to make the remaining units, usually around roach/hydra/spire axis, once you're economically clear of trouble.
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On June 30 2010 00:16 iCCup.Diamond wrote:Lol prove it and play him in the next ITL this Sunday or next Sunday (whenever the beta comes back up). Sheth already accepted the match. How about you?
i accept.
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United States2095 Posts
Once again thanks a TON for all the people who enjoyed my guide and took the time to look through it!
Blade -- I understand what your saying and I didn't mean to imply that the only way to kill the probe was with speed. I will adjust how I wrote that thank you. And I wasn't saying that its the best build just that I feel its an important build to have in your repiotoire. Its also my favorite and I feel it gets me in the best mid game position. ^^;
Brokengamer -- Awesome! So glad you enjoyed it and now hopefully your macro will kick in!
ascoe -- Thanks you too, I will work on a ZvZ guide at some point in the future! (If beta comes up soon it might take a bit, I have a few big things to do such as work on streaming, casting, and of course practicing.)
Markwerf -- I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it. I'll try next time to make it easier to read. Also if the when to make a 13 pool is fuzzy, I meant its at 13 drones so you would be at 13/13 on the population meter.
Lighioana -- For both your posts, thank you. (Good use of the word Troll!)
Drazzt -- Very interesting question. I find that if you go 13 pool it will definetly provide you with enough lings compared with 15 pool. I would compare it with Mondragons 9 hatch 9 pool build vs. the old 12 hatch 11 pool build. 12 hatch is VERY hard to defend a good 2 gate build, where as with 9 hatch 9 pool its easier. Howevever if you just can't hold it with zerglings, a good idea is to make 4-5 roaches to pressure him, but don't feel like you have to kill him. These roaches should just be used to chase zealots and force him to cannon or stalker / sentry. (When you go roaches tho be careful Protoss like to make voidrays vs. roach zergs!)
Carga -- I'm glad it helped you! If it helps 1-2 people be better players I will be happy.
FeTmplar --(See what I did there?) Now onto your question, I've tried making a second hatchery in my main. I don't feel this is ... I feel a good word is precise. If you ever listened to Nony talking about SC1 he talks about his visit in korea and how the koreans will make just the right ammount of producing buildings (gateways, barracks) that you will always be using them. So there would be no reason to make a 5th gateway if you could use ALL your minerals making units out of 4 gateways. I feel like with that 2nd hatchery in your main without an expansion you will be wasting alot of larva. I just feel like thats a sin lol
aLT)Nirvana -- Yeah hes cute, I still like Idra more tho. You should read the idra's quote page its epic. I would love to post a replay pack, however I re-installed my sc2 so I don't have any replays left. I will try and put one up whenever phase 2 comes up!
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Great writeup. Guess I'll start to do early gas for speedlings in the future. Looks like it's common to do.
>I have a few big things to do such as work on streaming, casting, and of course practicing.)
You have a stream on ustream/livestream?
^ nvm, found it. Do you have any specific times when you usually stream or is it just random, like when you feel to stream?
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What about the TLO opening - Double extractor, 12 pool, 11 extractor 10 overlord ;o against the gate outside/2gate outside of base?
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On maps like Steppes of War, doesn't a slow 2nd hatch and lack of gas (pulling 3 drones off gas early) leave you vulnerable to a proxy-voidray or a void-immortal-mass zealot combo? I've seen Protoss players throw down double gateway, 1 robo 1 stargate and get a protoss version of a 1-1-1 build and just kill the zerg b/c he only had 1-base, not able to produce sufficient hydralisks to defend.
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You can hold off early void rays quite easily with just queens.
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On June 30 2010 02:16 EnderCN wrote: You can hold off early void rays quite easily with just queens.
That would be true if there were only voidrays to worry about....
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United States2095 Posts
Next batch of answers to questions/thoughts :
figq -- I'm glad you've thought a lot about what I've wrote. The weakest points in this build I would say are the transitions. Figuring out when to stop making zerglings and start making drones, figuring out when exactly to put drones back on gas, figuring out when to make a lair, and figuring out how many queens you should get. You want to do all of those things while keeping your economy similar to the Protoss'. With zealots vs. zerglings yes its important to have around 4 per zealot. Its also important to not engage (get near enough that the zealots can attack your lings) before you have enough to kill the zealots. IF they can escape their shields regenerates really quick. A small tip you can do is select two zerglnigs and have them focus fire down the probe. I find that really helps!
Diamond -- Thanks for looking out for me! <3
Ouga -- Thanks! Yeah I wanted to go more into middle game, but I was daunted by the many different buildings and build orders I could talk about. Hopefully I'll have the motivation to go into it fairly soon tho!
Naniwa -- I appreciate that you don't want other zerg styles to try this. Hopefully no other zergs realize that when a protoss calls a build newbish they just don't want you to do it vs. them.
Zergsecs -- I'm glad your interested in me having a stream up! I had an old one that I attempted to stream from several times, however I will have a new one up shortly. I'll keep in touch with you so you have it! (Cool I have someone who'll watch me stream XD!)
Merikh -- Wow. Um I don't really know, I've never tried it personally. It sounds like a very anti-pressure early build. I think it could definetly have posibilities I've never heard of it so I can't really talk about it from personal experience. However if your having trouble vs. a protoss early it sounds like a good option! (Besides if TLO does it, it can't be that bad! -- Read its awesome)
Paramore -- Its not a very slow second hatch, in fact its faster then if you make a 14 pool 15 hatch, because you will be able to avoid the probe that makes your 14 pool 15 hatch a 14 pool 19 hatch. There is no innate proxy-voidray that works wonders against this, no matter what build order you do as zerg you have to watch for those evil flying death beams.
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On June 30 2010 00:56 Sheth wrote:FeTmplar --(See what I did there?) Now onto your question, I've tried making a second hatchery in my main. I don't feel this is ... I feel a good word is precise. If you ever listened to Nony talking about SC1 he talks about his visit in korea and how the koreans will make just the right ammount of producing buildings (gateways, barracks) that you will always be using them. So there would be no reason to make a 5th gateway if you could use ALL your minerals making units out of 4 gateways. I feel like with that 2nd hatchery in your main without an expansion you will be wasting alot of larva. I just feel like thats a sin lol
Hmm.. I understand what you mean. I will try to elaborate on my point and try to prove its usefulness can counter this negative aspect (wasting larvas as you put it).me know what you think
Before we get further, I don't think any larva is "wasted" unless you cap your larva amount. If you're not using them all, they're simply stockpiling, which can be good or bad I'll give you that, but they're not "wasted" per say...
I also think this is more of a defensive play I'm suggesting. Sorta like Sen's way of playing (I think that's him...)
1- We take for granted that If we make our 2nd hatchery at our natural expo, we will sooner or later have to spend one of our queen's 25 energy to expand the creep between our 2 bases. Having your 2nd hatchery at your ramp bridges the gap faster between your main and your natural expo and prevents you from having to halt your "Inject Larva" shots.
2- By building your 2nd hatchery at your ramp, it is easier to defend... I think we can consider this a fact. If you choose to, you can build a spine crawler or two on high ground to defend against early harassment with minimal zergling amount at your ramp.
3- If point 2 proves successful and we require less zerglings to defend against early harass / attacks, it allows us to build more drones or whatever else you wanna build. :D Those extra drones can be sent to your 3rd hatch when needed to counter the lack of economy boost from building your 2nd hatch at your natural.
(By the way, FeTmplar is unknown to me... was/is he a famous SC1 player?)
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On June 29 2010 20:52 naniwa wrote: lol what a noobish playstyle :[ Is someone gonna ban this guy yet? I dont understand how he can flame so much and only get a temp ban. Naniwa, the fact is that your 1 base all in hasn't won anything in a long time, Sheth has, so i'd recommend you remain quiet.
"I would compare it with Mondragons 9 hatch 9 pool build" LOOOOL dude I was so happy to read this shawn, DREWBIE WHERE ARE YOU!? so I came up with this build on competitive 2v2 about 6 years ago shawn, and stuck with it until I quit bw. Drewbie always said it was weak and I should do standard, but i kept doing it and we kept winning in 2v2 pretty much against everyone... LOL that's too funny (ofc when we lost my build was bad right drew?) it was perfect for holding up 1v2 with hatch @ ramp, and once lings came out i had more than z though slower speed, it worked good cause we were z/t...and then apparently it became popular L O L, morale boost!!! (you ok drew?)
lesson of the day: use your brains guys, guides are great reference and it lets you into the player's head, but you need to test out what works for you, like Drazzzzt for example : if the average gamer could hold Tester then he wouldn't be so average would he? its about what works for you and practicing on it repeatedly, you can be taught the best swimming technique and it doesnt mean that by using it you're gonna come close to beating Michael Phelps (not even if he's high).
I've gone 2nd hatch inside my base at least a good 5-10 times vs protoss and I've managed to beat people like Ace with it, shawn has tried it and doesnt like it, I don't mind it so much because when my exp is up its automatically saturated (but ofc its super situational), and sometimes you can't risk an expansion anywhere for whatever reasons and have to adapt, point im trying to make is it might not be ideal, but adapting is a very important part of the game, rarely everything goes as planned. But again, it is less than ideal, your build Mr.Templar, grants the protoss map control and leaves you with little to no mobility, it sounds like something you'd do to tech fast... but then again 1 hatch would be more effective if that was what you're going for, in sc1 we had no queens now we do. At higher level play you will get punished for anything you do or don't do, and if you don't take advantage of everything you're behind, period. but if he gets super fast gates or tried to cannon you or does something risky that sets him behind, drop a hatch inside your base, or tech faster switch your build arround to adapt, only knowing that he's sacrificed economy as well to do this.
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United States2095 Posts
You called me Sehth, its Sheth so I called you Fetmplar. (Using the same code of name switching as you ;P)
Making a second hatchery inside of your main base can be an "ok" strategy. If this was chess I would give it a ?!. (?! means its surprising and probably slightly worse then a normal move) I'll explain my reasons why to you.
Pre- Your larva will cap at three and then the hatchery won't make anymore without you spitting on the hatchery. So once you've gotten past three you will lose that extra larva every 15 seconds. (I have no idea how often they spawn, but 15 sounds close) However like you said you will have stock piled larva up. This can be good, but risky if you never get to fully use them all.
1- There are several ways around this slight problem. You can do what I like to call the idra/artosis queen and have ur queen on its second 25 minerals make a creep on its way to their second expansion, or you can simply make a 3rd queen and have it defend and make those extra creeps in your main. So I don't feel like this is a HUGE deal, but I understand what your saying.
2- Putting spine crawlers on high ground is a two edged sword. It will be very difficult for the early army of P to see those crawlers. However it will be dificult for the crawlers to hit the P army if they crawl along the side. So by the time you would want these crawlers on high ground ( mid game at earliest ) you should have spread the creep up to that area anyway.
3- MORE DRONESSSSS ))))))) However my point two kind o covers this as well. More drones for everyone!!
Now the reasoning why I gave it ?!. This allows you to get a lot of extra zerglings or roaches early on. I feel that if the protoss doesn't see this building and he thinks you are teching up from 1 base, (he'll see that you don't' have an expansion up) he will make less defence against either lings or banelings or roaches. So I feel like if you want an interesting cheese, hide that second hatch and make him think your teching while doing an early sneak attack!
Hope this helped!
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As a Protoss, its nice to get a good insight on diamond level zerg players' minds like Sheth and Catz. Learning a match-up inside out is part of mastering PvZ as much as this is about ZvP
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Thanks a ton for this man! It was a very helpful read. I would love to see ZvT and ZvZ as well.
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On June 30 2010 02:45 Paramore wrote:As a Protoss, its nice to get a good insight on diamond level zerg players' minds like Sheth and Catz. Learning a match-up inside out is part of mastering PvZ as much as this is about ZvP
this is all Sheth, I just get carried away by my zerg passion
(sorry about that shawny!)
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Good points Sheth (sorry for the typo :p)
If I understand correctly what you're saying, because of the fact I'm not harvesting from 2 mineral patches I will have less money to spend, thus = larva wasted. Right?
Correct me if I am wrong: Very often we see (even high ranked) zerg players early expand and, because of the other player's agressiveness, they tend to not have THAT many drones at their expo for quite a while because they're so focused on having to build zerglings / roaches to defend / repel. In such situations, I don't feel that I would not have *that* much less money than early expand builds, to the point that i'm wasting those "15 sec" larvas.
Personally I take these defensife situations for granted because, if we as zerg are not being pressured almost right from the start, then already I would say that we have an edge in the game.
What's your take on this?
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United States2095 Posts
Paramore -- Glad your enjoying it :D Next you need to post a P guide so I can learn!
TheAngelOfDeath -- Glad to see! Hopefully people like you will keep me motivated to finish my ZvT Guide.
CatZ -- Team Root ftw ^^
FTemplar -- All good. "If I understand correctly what you're saying, because of the fact I'm not harvesting from 2 mineral patches I will have less money to spend, thus = larva wasted. Right?" This is right except instead of 2 mineral patches its 7 or 8 depending on the map.
Its true that in early ZvP you won't have any drones at your natural until you've defended the early zealot. So its not that important that its early, however you will have to spend an extra 300 minerals and a drone to make another hatchery at your second minerals, and the time it will take to make is also very long. You lose a lot by not having a second hatchery up fairly early.
Pressure early... hmmm... I feel like if they don't scout to know what I'm doing then I have a slight edge as long as I've scouted what their doing. I think its all about the knowledge you have of what your opponents plan is and how you will counter it. ^^
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On June 30 2010 02:58 FTemplar wrote: Correct me if I am wrong: Very often we see (even high ranked) zerg players early expand and, because of the other player's agressiveness, they tend to not have THAT many drones at their expo for quite a while because they're so focused on having to build zerglings / roaches to defend / repel.
If you feel like you need to build the second hatcheriy anyway, it's almost always going to be better to build the second one at your expansion.
Zerglings require big areas to work in. Anytime you narrow the combat area, you're giving a huge advantage to the zealots. So, building a hatchery at the top of your ramp is going to be much more in favor of the protoss than the zerg, because protoss units are much better in tight chokes than zerg units are. This is why a protoss can choke his ramp, block the remaining space with one zealot, and hold off ridiculous numbers of zerglings while only requiring very small amounts of backup.
Also, there's something to be said for narrowing the protoss options by expanding, so if you're confident that you can hold off any sort of harass and end up ahead, it can actually be a really good thing to force their hand, even if it means you can't actually build drones from the second hatchery for a while. (but that would be true regardless of where you decide to place the second hatch)
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On June 30 2010 02:23 Sheth wrote:Next batch of answers to questions/thoughts : figq -- I'm glad you've thought a lot about what I've wrote. The weakest points in this build I would say are the transitions. Figuring out when to stop making zerglings and start making drones, figuring out when exactly to put drones back on gas, figuring out when to make a lair, and figuring out how many queens you should get. You want to do all of those things while keeping your economy similar to the Protoss'. With zealots vs. zerglings yes its important to have around 4 per zealot. Its also important to not engage (get near enough that the zealots can attack your lings) before you have enough to kill the zealots. IF they can escape their shields regenerates really quick. A small tip you can do is select two zerglnigs and have them focus fire down the probe. I find that really helps! Diamond -- Thanks for looking out for me! <3 Ouga -- Thanks! Yeah I wanted to go more into middle game, but I was daunted by the many different buildings and build orders I could talk about. Hopefully I'll have the motivation to go into it fairly soon tho! Naniwa -- I appreciate that you don't want other zerg styles to try this. Hopefully no other zergs realize that when a protoss calls a build newbish they just don't want you to do it vs. them. Zergsecs -- I'm glad your interested in me having a stream up! I had an old one that I attempted to stream from several times, however I will have a new one up shortly. I'll keep in touch with you so you have it! (Cool I have someone who'll watch me stream XD!) Merikh -- Wow. Um I don't really know, I've never tried it personally. It sounds like a very anti-pressure early build. I think it could definetly have posibilities I've never heard of it so I can't really talk about it from personal experience. However if your having trouble vs. a protoss early it sounds like a good option! (Besides if TLO does it, it can't be that bad! -- Read its awesome) Paramore -- Its not a very slow second hatch, in fact its faster then if you make a 14 pool 15 hatch, because you will be able to avoid the probe that makes your 14 pool 15 hatch a 14 pool 19 hatch. There is no innate proxy-voidray that works wonders against this, no matter what build order you do as zerg you have to watch for those evil flying death beams.
I've used it few times, was just curious seems to work good off one base until you can secure a second.
I'm also curious if you played with 1 base hydra opening? I call it the DabOo build (he was just dominating with this on the EU server for a while) basically. 12/13 pool, extractor -> queen -> 2 spine crawlers (and couple lings if necessary) -> lair with first 100 gas, get 2nd gas as lair goes up. Get OL speed once lair finishes. Drop hydralisk den and produce hydras. Position OL's by ramp, reposition spine crawlers then grab an expo.
I used to open like that ^ betas been down so long forgot the exact BO, but it was really effective against any 1 gate/1 gate 1 stargate opening and made it super easy to secure your second. I also think this build is really strong against any FE with cannon opening because hydras just tear through cannons like its nothing. Works best on maps like steppes and scrap.
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On June 30 2010 00:56 Sheth wrote: Drazzt -- Very interesting question. I find that if you go 13 pool it will definetly provide you with enough lings compared with 15 pool. I would compare it with Mondragons 9 hatch 9 pool build vs. the old 12 hatch 11 pool build. 12 hatch is VERY hard to defend a good 2 gate build, where as with 9 hatch 9 pool its easier. Howevever if you just can't hold it with zerglings, a good idea is to make 4-5 roaches to pressure him, but don't feel like you have to kill him. These roaches should just be used to chase zealots and force him to cannon or stalker / sentry. (When you go roaches tho be careful Protoss like to make voidrays vs. roach zergs!)
Thanks for your answer, I like your style of answering to all ppl in the thread btw. GJ.
It definitely becomes easier and I sometimes even tried 12 pool to be even more safe, but against very good zeal micro I still have a hard time. Probably my ling micro isnt top notch, but I have to say that compared to SC1 I find it kinda annoying that your lings after popping out are on attack-move towards the rally point (or is there a way to avoid this?). So, if you don't look very closely at your 2nd hatch, your lings tend to sacrifice themselves in no-time against the zeals bashing your hatch (and good protoss move their zeals right to your eggs while hatch-bashing in order to get several hits before you can move the lings away). Using your queen is very dangerous as the zeals come so earlier that you dont have much creep and queens are so awfully slow and die so fast to zeals. Later its getting a little better. One game I lost because the protoss added 3-4 probes to his attacking zeals which is really hardcore. I should've probably just cancelled the hatch as pulling probes costs quite a lot of minerals, but I am not sure.
So, this is the reason why I experimented with roach openings in the end expanding only at around 30 supply after having 3-5 roaches (depending on what I scout). At least against 2-gate openings.
Protoss has to be very careful then, because I can add a lot of roaches very fast and without cannons he can be in trouble soon.
So, when protoss fast-expands and adds cannons you have enough time to pump pure drones later on which will lead to a slight income advantage.
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Thanks a lot for posting this Sheth, I appreciate the opening knowledge ^^
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in the op you said burning when you were talking about maps that are bad for 14 hatch, what you meant was blistering [sands].
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Hi Sheth,
Thank you for posting this guide, I'm really happy to see it because I've spent the last few days designing a build to deal with P blocking the expo hatch with a pylon; I'm excited to compare my build with yours. I too felt that getting a 14 pool 16 hatch is too risky to be called "standard".
I'll list it for you below in case it generates any more great ideas. It was based off of these core goals: - earliest 2nd hatch asap after 4 lings kill a pylon at expo (takes approx 12 seconds for 4 lings to kill pylon) - build doesn't hurt economy - can deal with early pressure or cheese - first 100 gas makes speedlings, second 100 gas makes lair
9 Overlord (queue 14th drone egg to scout) 14 pool 16 Overlord @ pool finishes -> Queen + 4 lings + extractor @ lings born -> send drone with lings to expo and build hatch asap 200 minerals in the bank when expo hatch is placed - can spend it on a 2nd queen, a roach warren, or 2 spine crawlers @100 gas -> ling speed @100 gas -> lair
It's flexible (gives me options with the 200 minerals), allows my expo at 3:45 game time, strong economy (comparable to 14 pool 16 hatch)
I notice that the differences between your build and mine is that yours is safer against rushes, but has less emphasis on economy.
Have you tested getting a delayed gas and ling speed? I'm curious to understand more about why you sacrifice your droning power to get faster ling speed. I still get ling speed, but just a couple minutes later. I don't think I lose ZvP games where I say "if only I had ling speed 2 minutes ago I wouldn't have lost".
Earlier gas = less money to spend on more drones, although early ling speed im sure is very helpful against reaper harass, but your build is for ZvP.
I`m also considering making a 13 pool version of the build I listed above, just to have a build that`s a little safer.
PS: do you use a scouting drone in your build, or do you have success with just waiting for the lings as your scouts
Thanks again!
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No mention of building a queen in the beginning part of the build.. 16'th drone straight into mass lings But then wayyyy later on it states to build one early on... a bit confusing
Either way, very nice. I read it even though my ZvP is my strongest, you should write a ZvT one, as thats my worst MU due to mech.. =D
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When i see that Toss is going Fast Forge expand i usually Rush to nydus worm they never see it because their buildings are at the front of their big base early game works pretty much every time.
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Sheth just a few points:
1. Protoss and terran do structure blocks in SCBW a lot too. FE is even more important for zerg in that game - yet still zergs manage to deal with things like that. Also, a 13pool doesn't prevent probe/pylon block anyway - just a bit faster hatch (if blocked) at the cost of a lower economy. Personally I don't have much against 13 pool on a small map though, since it's good vs zealots, my main gripe is getting speed.
2. I am still not bought on getting early speed just to justify dealing with early zealot harass. Yes speedlings are very important or even necessary vs protoss, but not for dealing with zealots. The problem is that zergling speed takes a long time to get. At 13 pool 13 extractor there will be a delay after the pool finishes before speed could be researched. Combine that with the big head start the hatchery (100s) has before the pool finishes, and the fact that speed is 110s to research, and you'll be looking at quite a long time before the speed can be put to use, as opposed to just getting a hatchery and spine crawler(s) which is faster. Not only that, but one gets the benefit of having a hatchery up earlier. Don't build spines if they aren't zealot pressuring - I don't think one can say similar for getting speed.
3. I read your note on drone swapping when done. It doesn't mean you didn't just spend 100/100 on an early upgrade - It still hinders your economy. I also understand the build isn't only against FE - I don't know how you came up with me thinking that.
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I do like the speed a lot, with it you do not even have to fight zealots, you can do a run-by and he will be in big trouble.
Thanks for sharing it with us and for answering to questions! very nice indeed!
Please ZvP that is my biggest problem case light is so vulnerable to everything and roach die so quick to M&M and if i go muta he will just roll me. My biggest problem is with Bio-Siege cause stim just kills everything and even if i outnumber him greatly siege will seal the deal.
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Thanks for the guide Sheth! Really appreciate it when the pros take time to spread some knowledge.
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There's a lot of good advice in this thread, though I'm curious as to why you go early lingspeed. I find speedlings to be incredibly inefficient and uneffective units in ZvP and gassing that early makes you significantly behind if you don't deal some sort of damage or force a reaction, even if you do pull off at 100 and drone heavily.
I do agree that 14 hatch is a super risky low gain build and should only be used in the same way that 1 rax FE (vs P) or 3 hatch before pool is used in BW - a slight eco cheese best saved for BOx matches.
My build of choice is 15 pool 16 hatch 15 drone 16 lord then zerglings or drones + queen depending on if you have to defend something. I like to double gas on 24 (right when my first queen pops out) unless I'm fending off some sort of rush in which case it will naturally be a little later.
Something I also do which I think every single zerg should do is throw down 1-2 crawlers as soon as your natural goes up (earlier if you suspect multiple reapers or 2 gate!). I also believe that vs protoss your best choice is 2 hatch hydra. I don't like muta openings since phoenix and archons are quite strong vs them so the only thing they're good vs is robo openings, and often robo openings can get an obs in your base before muta pop so toss can be ready.
A very important thing to do vs 1 base protoss: -make at least 4-5 crawlers. Do NOT make zerglings. Save energy with queens and don't use spawn larvas! You want to have tranfusions ready to keep your crawlers alive as long as possible while you wait for hydras.
-Wall with an evo chamber at your natural! This is great vs meching Terrans too since it mucks up hellions, and it makes zealots much weaker, just like in BW.
-Make sure not to overdrone before hydras are out! Very rarely will protosses stay on 1 base and then not do a massive push. You don't really want to be more than 40 food drones+queens vs a 1 basing protoss is what I found.
For me the scariest thing is fighting a gate/forge expand (very difficult to break) into a 3/4 gate 2 robo blink stalker/coli army. When Protoss plays aggressive with blink stalkers using them for harass until he gets 4-5 colossi it's very difficult make enough stuff to break that giant protoss ball. How do you go about dealing with this?
Currently I've found 3 acceptable solutions, but how viable they are is rather difficult to address.
-The first is going hydra/baneling/ling and using banelings to force protoss to spread out making hydra much stronger or lose their meatshield leaving the colossi vulnerable to ling/hydra (zerglings do fairly well vs colossi if they can reach them.) This is one of the few times I'd make speedlings vs protoss.
-The second is going for infestors and using fungal growth to keep zealots away, and coli from kiting, then using NP on the coli. The problem I forsee is that getting enough infestors while keeping a decent hydracount might prove impossible. It might be better open roach in this scenario and get a few extra queens for AA.
-The third is getting corruptors but honestly I find them ineffective and it's impossible to know what ratio of corruptor/ground you need.
edit: fungal doesn't stop stalkers from blinking sadly =[
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On July 02 2010 01:39 Floophead_III wrote: There's a lot of good advice in this thread, though I'm curious as to why you go early lingspeed. I find speedlings to be incredibly inefficient and uneffective units in ZvP and gassing that early makes you significantly behind if you don't deal some sort of damage or force a reaction, even if you do pull off at 100 and drone heavily.
I do agree that 14 hatch is a super risky low gain build and should only be used in the same way that 1 rax FE (vs P) or 3 hatch before pool is used in BW - a slight eco cheese best saved for BOx matches.
My build of choice is 15 pool 16 hatch 15 drone 16 lord then zerglings or drones + queen depending on if you have to defend something. I like to double gas on 24 (right when my first queen pops out) unless I'm fending off some sort of rush in which case it will naturally be a little later.
Something I also do which I think every single zerg should do is throw down 1-2 crawlers as soon as your natural goes up (earlier if you suspect multiple reapers or 2 gate!). I also believe that vs protoss your best choice is 2 hatch hydra. I don't like muta openings since phoenix and archons are quite strong vs them so the only thing they're good vs is robo openings, and often robo openings can get an obs in your base before muta pop so toss can be ready.
A very important thing to do vs 1 base protoss: -make at least 4-5 crawlers. Do NOT make zerglings. Save energy with queens and don't use spawn larvas! You want to have tranfusions ready to keep your crawlers alive as long as possible while you wait for hydras.
-Wall with an evo chamber at your natural! This is great vs meching Terrans too since it mucks up hellions, and it makes zealots much weaker, just like in BW.
-Make sure not to overdrone before hydras are out! Very rarely will protosses stay on 1 base and then not do a massive push. You don't really want to be more than 40 food drones+queens vs a 1 basing protoss is what I found.
For me the scariest thing is fighting a gate/forge expand (very difficult to break) into a 3/4 gate 2 robo blink stalker/coli army. When Protoss plays aggressive with blink stalkers using them for harass until he gets 4-5 colossi it's very difficult make enough stuff to break that giant protoss ball. How do you go about dealing with this?
Currently I've found 3 acceptable solutions, but how viable they are is rather difficult to address.
-The first is going hydra/baneling/ling and using banelings to force protoss to spread out making hydra much stronger or lose their meatshield leaving the colossi vulnerable to ling/hydra (zerglings do fairly well vs colossi if they can reach them.) This is one of the few times I'd make speedlings vs protoss.
-The second is going for infestors and using fungal growth to keep zealots away, stalkers from blinking, and coli from kiting, then using NP on the coli. The problem I forsee is that getting enough infestors while keeping a decent hydracount might prove impossible. It might be better open roach in this scenario and get a few extra queens for AA.
-The third is getting corruptors but honestly I find them ineffective and it's impossible to know what ratio of corruptor/ground you need.
I just read your post, good sir, clearly you do not play at high diamond levels, or low diamond levels for that matter. If I had to guess by your display of knowledge in this threat, you're a gold player at best (i hope no offense taken).
Sheth on the other hand is one of the best zergs in north america and perhaps the world currently, the fact that you Mr.Floophead The Third are trying to teach and tell a multiple high level tournament winner, Team USA 'Ace', 7 week ITL Championship holder what is right and wrong makes me a little bit sick, just a little bit... your "Guide", or reply or whatever you were trying to archieve is VERY VERY faulty IN MY OPINION, notice how I am not absolute when I talk even when I know for a fact that I am a far better player than you.
your guide as a matter of fact is SO faulty I could've just replied in 1 sentence and made you look bad instead of wasting time writing all this : fungal growth does NOT stop stalkers from blinking
If I were Sheth I probably wouldn't answer, if you want to make your own threat and guide by all means do, but a friendly warning to you sir: you clearly lack the knowledge to do so and you will look very very bad.
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thank you Sheth for this guide!! It's very educational especially for new players like myself. I love Zerg and I would definitely support the idea of making ZvT and ZvZ guides. THx!!
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If you want the thread to get lost.. why post? The thing about strategy is that past the early game you can't be specific. I don't get your gripes here, you say that he's narcissistic but you say it in a way that says that your opinion is better than everyone elses. In short stop being hypocritical.
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On July 02 2010 02:05 CatZ.root wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2010 01:39 Floophead_III wrote: There's a lot of good advice in this thread, though I'm curious as to why you go early lingspeed. I find speedlings to be incredibly inefficient and uneffective units in ZvP and gassing that early makes you significantly behind if you don't deal some sort of damage or force a reaction, even if you do pull off at 100 and drone heavily.
I do agree that 14 hatch is a super risky low gain build and should only be used in the same way that 1 rax FE (vs P) or 3 hatch before pool is used in BW - a slight eco cheese best saved for BOx matches.
My build of choice is 15 pool 16 hatch 15 drone 16 lord then zerglings or drones + queen depending on if you have to defend something. I like to double gas on 24 (right when my first queen pops out) unless I'm fending off some sort of rush in which case it will naturally be a little later.
Something I also do which I think every single zerg should do is throw down 1-2 crawlers as soon as your natural goes up (earlier if you suspect multiple reapers or 2 gate!). I also believe that vs protoss your best choice is 2 hatch hydra. I don't like muta openings since phoenix and archons are quite strong vs them so the only thing they're good vs is robo openings, and often robo openings can get an obs in your base before muta pop so toss can be ready.
A very important thing to do vs 1 base protoss: -make at least 4-5 crawlers. Do NOT make zerglings. Save energy with queens and don't use spawn larvas! You want to have tranfusions ready to keep your crawlers alive as long as possible while you wait for hydras.
-Wall with an evo chamber at your natural! This is great vs meching Terrans too since it mucks up hellions, and it makes zealots much weaker, just like in BW.
-Make sure not to overdrone before hydras are out! Very rarely will protosses stay on 1 base and then not do a massive push. You don't really want to be more than 40 food drones+queens vs a 1 basing protoss is what I found.
For me the scariest thing is fighting a gate/forge expand (very difficult to break) into a 3/4 gate 2 robo blink stalker/coli army. When Protoss plays aggressive with blink stalkers using them for harass until he gets 4-5 colossi it's very difficult make enough stuff to break that giant protoss ball. How do you go about dealing with this?
Currently I've found 3 acceptable solutions, but how viable they are is rather difficult to address.
-The first is going hydra/baneling/ling and using banelings to force protoss to spread out making hydra much stronger or lose their meatshield leaving the colossi vulnerable to ling/hydra (zerglings do fairly well vs colossi if they can reach them.) This is one of the few times I'd make speedlings vs protoss.
-The second is going for infestors and using fungal growth to keep zealots away, stalkers from blinking, and coli from kiting, then using NP on the coli. The problem I forsee is that getting enough infestors while keeping a decent hydracount might prove impossible. It might be better open roach in this scenario and get a few extra queens for AA.
-The third is getting corruptors but honestly I find them ineffective and it's impossible to know what ratio of corruptor/ground you need. I just read your post, good sir, clearly you do not play at high diamond levels, or low diamond levels for that matter. If I had to guess by your display of knowledge in this threat, you're a gold player at best (i hope no offense taken). Sheth on the other hand is one of the best zergs in north america and perhaps the world currently, the fact that you Mr.Floophead The Third are trying to teach and tell a multiple high level tournament winner, Team USA 'Ace', 7 week ITL Championship holder what is right and wrong makes me a little bit sick, just a little bit... your "Guide", or reply or whatever you were trying to archieve is VERY VERY faulty IN MY OPINION, notice how I am not absolute when I talk even when I know for a fact that I am a far better player than you. your guide as a matter of fact is SO faulty I could've just replied in 1 sentence and made you look bad instead of wasting time writing all this : fungal growth does NOT stop stalkers from blinking
If I were Sheth I probably wouldn't answer, if you want to make your own threat and guide by all means do, but a friendly warning to you sir: you clearly lack the knowledge to do so and you will look very very bad.
I'm a top diamond and I play with vTgaming. Perhaps you'd like to BO5 sometime? I know sheth is a good player, I just wonder what his reasoning behind some of his seemingly arbitrary choices are.
The conclusions I've reached are from months of testing and experience vs very skilled players. I don't like making zerglings because you're basically reliant on protoss not having good force fields and it sucks up a ton of larva, larva you could either save for high tech units, drones, or spend in the form of queen energy on transfusions and creep tumors. It's not that it's not viable to make zerglings to hold early aggression, moreso that it's a much greater investment.
I do agree that I'm not the best zerg player. My terran is the race I'm most comfortable with at this point and I would call it my "main" race. However, I don't think there's anything wrong with my advice. I prefer 2 hatch hydra openings. It's not necessarily the best opening, but I find it to be the safest and most versatile.
Perhaps you should tell me where my advice is incorrect instead of outright insulting me. I've always held respect for you and your team, don't make me lose it.
Lastly, I was told that fungal growth keeps stalkers in place. It is not something I've tested but I can do that right now to verify. It's very possible I'm incorrect on that count.
edit:
Yes you're right about that part with fungal. I have been misinformed. It's still useful for the other two mentioned reasons though. I think they should change that =/
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Yeah man anyone that bitches about Sheth is insane. The guy was the only guy that could roll with HuK at a certain point in the game when HuK was raping everyone, and is the only man to defend the ITL Championship, let alone defend it against people like HuK and Ace.......
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United States2095 Posts
Floop -- Heya floop. I appreciate you trying to post extra things to help out my guide. A lot of the stuff you said here was a bit off. Fungal doesn't stop stalkers from blinking. I feel corruptors are the best to deal with any sort of collosus build. I think zerglings are necessary in all zvp games. I havn't found hydra baneling to be a viable option. I will try not to post things on a Terran strategy page because I'm not 100% sure about all the little things. I have high respect for team vT. o o
CatZ -- <3
Azar -- Thanks, I'm working on ZvT now, dunno how soon I'll get it up tho!
DC Elite -- You were warned like 4 posts ago, so be careful about backing up what you say with a reason. Your argument is invalid because my hair is a bird, just doens't fly.
Raelcun -- Thanks I appreciate it! I will keep my guides from being hypocritcal :D
Diamond -- Thanks Diamond! Our plans will come to fruition... muahahha
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On July 02 2010 04:58 Floophead_III wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2010 02:05 CatZ.root wrote:On July 02 2010 01:39 Floophead_III wrote: There's a lot of good advice in this thread, though I'm curious as to why you go early lingspeed. I find speedlings to be incredibly inefficient and uneffective units in ZvP and gassing that early makes you significantly behind if you don't deal some sort of damage or force a reaction, even if you do pull off at 100 and drone heavily.
I do agree that 14 hatch is a super risky low gain build and should only be used in the same way that 1 rax FE (vs P) or 3 hatch before pool is used in BW - a slight eco cheese best saved for BOx matches.
My build of choice is 15 pool 16 hatch 15 drone 16 lord then zerglings or drones + queen depending on if you have to defend something. I like to double gas on 24 (right when my first queen pops out) unless I'm fending off some sort of rush in which case it will naturally be a little later.
Something I also do which I think every single zerg should do is throw down 1-2 crawlers as soon as your natural goes up (earlier if you suspect multiple reapers or 2 gate!). I also believe that vs protoss your best choice is 2 hatch hydra. I don't like muta openings since phoenix and archons are quite strong vs them so the only thing they're good vs is robo openings, and often robo openings can get an obs in your base before muta pop so toss can be ready.
A very important thing to do vs 1 base protoss: -make at least 4-5 crawlers. Do NOT make zerglings. Save energy with queens and don't use spawn larvas! You want to have tranfusions ready to keep your crawlers alive as long as possible while you wait for hydras.
-Wall with an evo chamber at your natural! This is great vs meching Terrans too since it mucks up hellions, and it makes zealots much weaker, just like in BW.
-Make sure not to overdrone before hydras are out! Very rarely will protosses stay on 1 base and then not do a massive push. You don't really want to be more than 40 food drones+queens vs a 1 basing protoss is what I found.
For me the scariest thing is fighting a gate/forge expand (very difficult to break) into a 3/4 gate 2 robo blink stalker/coli army. When Protoss plays aggressive with blink stalkers using them for harass until he gets 4-5 colossi it's very difficult make enough stuff to break that giant protoss ball. How do you go about dealing with this?
Currently I've found 3 acceptable solutions, but how viable they are is rather difficult to address.
-The first is going hydra/baneling/ling and using banelings to force protoss to spread out making hydra much stronger or lose their meatshield leaving the colossi vulnerable to ling/hydra (zerglings do fairly well vs colossi if they can reach them.) This is one of the few times I'd make speedlings vs protoss.
-The second is going for infestors and using fungal growth to keep zealots away, stalkers from blinking, and coli from kiting, then using NP on the coli. The problem I forsee is that getting enough infestors while keeping a decent hydracount might prove impossible. It might be better open roach in this scenario and get a few extra queens for AA.
-The third is getting corruptors but honestly I find them ineffective and it's impossible to know what ratio of corruptor/ground you need. I just read your post, good sir, clearly you do not play at high diamond levels, or low diamond levels for that matter. If I had to guess by your display of knowledge in this threat, you're a gold player at best (i hope no offense taken). Sheth on the other hand is one of the best zergs in north america and perhaps the world currently, the fact that you Mr.Floophead The Third are trying to teach and tell a multiple high level tournament winner, Team USA 'Ace', 7 week ITL Championship holder what is right and wrong makes me a little bit sick, just a little bit... your "Guide", or reply or whatever you were trying to archieve is VERY VERY faulty IN MY OPINION, notice how I am not absolute when I talk even when I know for a fact that I am a far better player than you. your guide as a matter of fact is SO faulty I could've just replied in 1 sentence and made you look bad instead of wasting time writing all this : fungal growth does NOT stop stalkers from blinking
If I were Sheth I probably wouldn't answer, if you want to make your own threat and guide by all means do, but a friendly warning to you sir: you clearly lack the knowledge to do so and you will look very very bad. I'm a top diamond and I play with vTgaming. Perhaps you'd like to BO5 sometime? I know sheth is a good player, I just wonder what his reasoning behind some of his seemingly arbitrary choices are. The conclusions I've reached are from months of testing and experience vs very skilled players. I don't like making zerglings because you're basically reliant on protoss not having good force fields and it sucks up a ton of larva, larva you could either save for high tech units, drones, or spend in the form of queen energy on transfusions and creep tumors. It's not that it's not viable to make zerglings to hold early aggression, moreso that it's a much greater investment. I do agree that I'm not the best zerg player. My terran is the race I'm most comfortable with at this point and I would call it my "main" race. However, I don't think there's anything wrong with my advice. I prefer 2 hatch hydra openings. It's not necessarily the best opening, but I find it to be the safest and most versatile. Perhaps you should tell me where my advice is incorrect instead of outright insulting me. I've always held respect for you and your team, don't make me lose it. Lastly, I was told that fungal growth keeps stalkers in place. It is not something I've tested but I can do that right now to verify. It's very possible I'm incorrect on that count.
I've drawn my conclusions from playing very VERY skilled players, and I wouldnt post a guide or argue with sheth or anyone at my level or above it for a simple reason: they might know more
okie:
"I'm a top diamond and I play with vTgaming. Perhaps you'd like to BO5 sometime?" :
you PLAY with vT gaming, so you're not in vTgaming... you're just making vT, a nice team, look bad. But im sure someone from vT will come and tell you that themselves I doubt they appreciate you saying you train with them.
on that note, i'll take your BO5 and raise you to a BO9 with my offrace of your choice.
I do agree that I'm not the best zerg player. My terran is the race I'm most comfortable with at this point and I would call it my "main" race
so you're arguing with one of the best players in north america, and its not even your main race? nice.
Perhaps you should tell me where my advice is incorrect instead of outright insulting me. I've always held respect for you and your team, don't make me lose it.
Please tell me where I insult you, I doubt I did, perhaps you should ask WHY isntead of writing your own guide, that's rather not just arrogant but also disrespectful from you, I believe most people would agree with me, again i'll say: if you think your methods are better than sheth as your post seems to indicate, post your own guide, just a fair warning it PROBABLY won't go that well, because many of the things you said are VERY inaccurate.
lets stop trolling sheth's guide, and lets play that BO9 whenever the beta's up, you pick my race, deal?
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Thanks for the guide. My play style is like yours already though, with a big mineral emphasis. I found I tend to get later and later gas as I played zerg. You can catch back up in gas anyway after you pump enough drones to get 4 geysers later on.
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On July 02 2010 05:16 CatZ.root wrote: on that note, i'll take your BO5 and raise you to a BO9 with my offrace of your choice.
so you're arguing with one of the best players in north america, and its not even your main race? nice.
lets stop trolling sheth's guide, and lets play that BO9 whenever the beta's up, you pick my race, deal?
lol CatZ for president! I would so watch that match. Make it happen
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Sheth: I think perhaps you and catz are reading my post incorrectly. Everything after I start talking about 2 base stalker/colossus ball is not hardcore advice. I'm more posing ideas I wanted you to comment on, which you did and I appreciate that.
I do think that vs 1 base protoss doing a 2 hatch hydra build those are pretty solid bits of advice. If you're doing a zergling/roach + queen based defense obviously things might not apply. Do you disagree with any of those points?
Catz: I'll play you BO9 or whatever you want when beta's up. I appreciate everything sheth has said but I think it's far from comprehensive so I wanted to post pretty straightforward points which he might want to add or consider, pose a different approach (which works just fine, it's just a different style) and ask questions about what I believe to be the most problematic situation for zergs right now.
What I don't want to do is sound like I'm overriding Sheth's guide with my own. I do apologize if my post came off that way, I was writing it at work hastily and just wanted to say things quickly.
And also you said I'm not even a low diamond player, probably gold. I think that's quite an obvious insult for the record.
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I agree with Xapti on page 1, that 14 pool 15 hatch should be the standard play for most zerg'ers against P which does coincide with Sheth's philosophy that "As a zerg player your initial goal is to start ahead of your opponent in expoes".
It works out well because the P response to seeing this will almost always be a rush. With proper queen control (i'm talking like 3 queens), spines, creep, maybe drone help, and lings if you can hold this off and be well ahead of your opponent. Against a pro you might have trouble, but most plats and diamond players wont be able to break you if you concentrate on your micro.
I almost feel like as a zerg you should invite the rush against most races. Zergs strength is that they can produce units in the early game way easier than P, who need multiple production buildings to match you. If you keep the game in tier 1/1.5 you are in good shape! Stop the rush, spend a few minutes to drone up, then army up with roaches and push out as soon as you are able.
If they dont rush you are still in good shape as you now on two bases, just watch out for voids, but 3 or even 4 queens at this point should be just fine.
You HAVE to expand, INVITE the rush, BEAT the rush, ROACH him when able. The formula to success against P.
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Very Informative. I would love to see ZvZ and ZvT openings. In addition, i would also like to see mid-late game stratagies, and possibly counters to particular builds our opponents could get.
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On July 02 2010 05:34 Floophead_III wrote: Sheth: I think perhaps you and catz are reading my post incorrectly. Everything after I start talking about 2 base stalker/colossus ball is not hardcore advice. I'm more posing ideas I wanted you to comment on, which you did and I appreciate that.
I do think that vs 1 base protoss doing a 2 hatch hydra build those are pretty solid bits of advice. If you're doing a zergling/roach + queen based defense obviously things might not apply. Do you disagree with any of those points?
Catz: I'll play you BO9 or whatever you want when beta's up. I appreciate everything sheth has said but I think it's far from comprehensive so I wanted to post pretty straightforward points which he might want to add or consider, pose a different approach (which works just fine, it's just a different style) and ask questions about what I believe to be the most problematic situation for zergs right now.
What I don't want to do is sound like I'm overriding Sheth's guide with my own. I do apologize if my post came off that way, I was writing it at work hastily and just wanted to say things quickly.
And also you said I'm not even a low diamond player, probably gold. I think that's quite an obvious insult for the record.
See that's way different, and 100% understandable I guess we were reading your post wrong, perhaps you phrased it wrong, I as I am sure sheth does too (I am actually sure cause im on vent with him right now) appreciate your apologies, and on my behalf I apologize if I offended you, I won't say it wasn't my intention, it was, but I was trying to make a point and a case for my team member and friend. again appreciate your apologies.
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Great post i would like to see more top players posting their theory behind their strats/BOs or maybe they're waiting for live to unleash. I would love more on the other races as well as what you do to deal with race specific things such as Colossus do u use NP/corruptors/TunnClaw/ling flank or just better micro with your main army and likewise for siege tanks/MMM . . . etc etc :D
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I'd just like to say that while most of that advice is fine, its not really helpful because of the way its written. Its just far too wordy for such a small amount of advice that really won't help get you out of silver. The advice is far too narrow and quite frankly a bore to read through.
Take all your guys off gas after ling speed! Um. What if i want lair? Or a couple roach? Or +1/+1? What if i don't want ling speed?
You mention close positions being vastly important, then act like it only effects hatch or pool first. Who exactly does this information target? There is NO player that is FE'ing against a protoss because he knows he has to stay ahead on expansions but doesn't realize that a fast gateway will crush him. And even if that player did exist, don't you think he'd figure that out the very first time someone showed up with zealots before his pool finished?
I'd go on and on, but you get my point i'm sure.
I'm sure you're a fantastic player and all, but if you want to put out some information, why not just take some time and explain why its so important to get a hatch first against protoss when you CAN. Not just tell us its important and then tell us not to do it in the following situations. You aren't helping. At least not me. And believe me, i could use the help.
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I have a question for you Sheth. What if you just put your hatch at your expo in a non-optimal position? I have done this a few times before in order to place the hatch when there was a pylon in the way. The pylon will die from later lings (before warpgates get up or anything else) and you will have access to a 3rd gas and a non-optimal 4th gas and same for most of the minerals.
But it will get the hatch up without forcing you to get earlyer lings out, although giving some reduced mining later, but getting the hatch up earlyer is still going to net you more even if you need 10 more drones to saturate. (and you can always put another hatch down in the optimal spot)
My idea may be completely wrong, but it will at the very least still give access to an early 3rd and 4th gas, although need to put 4-5 drones on 4th gas in that case. (more gas if your going mutas perhaps)
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Sheth said: they have no idea if your rushing something early (roaches, banes) or if your macro'ing. You can sometimes switch into banes if your opponent isn't getting much defense. So yeah thats why I like That's a good point, and I would say that's has to be the main reason why the build might be effective - very useful for any player to be in a situation like that. Typically protoss aren't too afraid of zerg (very popular timing pushes of doom), but I guess what looks like a 1 base gasy build might change their opinion.
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United States2095 Posts
Heyo again, here to answer the questions and put some water on fires XD
P00RKID -- Awesome. Yeah that's definitely my thought too. About your later question I find that as never a viable option. It was a viable option in SC:BW because you were putting down a third hatch anyway. If you want a more detailed explanation read a page or so back where I talked about a 2nd hatchery being placed on a ramp instead of at the natural.
DC Elite -- Haha much nicer post! Yea I understand that as a good idea. Its all about give and take. P rushes, forces a z to defend with least possible units, z counters, p defends with least possible units. Then usually both macro. That's my recipe for success ZvP. :p
Shin -- Thanks. I gotta get to work! : D
Foodoo -- Thanks. Nice first post! Middle game is very complicated. I wish I could say simply go roach hydra vs. one type of army composition. Its not really like this though. You have to scout and continually build units for what you think your opponent will make. Its very much think ahead style play. Roachs > Zealots, Hydras > Stalkers Corrupters > Collosi Sentries > lings .. the list goes on. Its just wise to have enough of the > units that your side wins.
Roaming -- I'm sorry that I'm not being very helpful to ya. My whole point of writing this was to help. All I can say is that it made sense to a lot of other people. There are some situations where you can hatch first. Bet you didn't know that? Either way... I'll work on more guides that are simpler to understand. Also possibly shorter... I'll see :p
Xapti -- Finally someone who gets me! So happy right now lol =)
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On July 02 2010 01:39 Floophead_III wrote: There's a lot of good advice in this thread, though I'm curious as to why you go early lingspeed. I find speedlings to be incredibly inefficient and uneffective units in ZvP and gassing that early makes you significantly behind if you don't deal some sort of damage or force a reaction, even if you do pull off at 100 and drone heavily.
I do agree that 14 hatch is a super risky low gain build and should only be used in the same way that 1 rax FE (vs P) or 3 hatch before pool is used in BW - a slight eco cheese best saved for BOx matches.
My build of choice is 15 pool 16 hatch 15 drone 16 lord then zerglings or drones + queen depending on if you have to defend something. I like to double gas on 24 (right when my first queen pops out) unless I'm fending off some sort of rush in which case it will naturally be a little later.
Something I also do which I think every single zerg should do is throw down 1-2 crawlers as soon as your natural goes up (earlier if you suspect multiple reapers or 2 gate!). I also believe that vs protoss your best choice is 2 hatch hydra. I don't like muta openings since phoenix and archons are quite strong vs them so the only thing they're good vs is robo openings, and often robo openings can get an obs in your base before muta pop so toss can be ready.
A very important thing to do vs 1 base protoss: -make at least 4-5 crawlers. Do NOT make zerglings. Save energy with queens and don't use spawn larvas! You want to have tranfusions ready to keep your crawlers alive as long as possible while you wait for hydras.
-Wall with an evo chamber at your natural! This is great vs meching Terrans too since it mucks up hellions, and it makes zealots much weaker, just like in BW.
-Make sure not to overdrone before hydras are out! Very rarely will protosses stay on 1 base and then not do a massive push. You don't really want to be more than 40 food drones+queens vs a 1 basing protoss is what I found.
For me the scariest thing is fighting a gate/forge expand (very difficult to break) into a 3/4 gate 2 robo blink stalker/coli army. When Protoss plays aggressive with blink stalkers using them for harass until he gets 4-5 colossi it's very difficult make enough stuff to break that giant protoss ball. How do you go about dealing with this?
Currently I've found 3 acceptable solutions, but how viable they are is rather difficult to address.
-The first is going hydra/baneling/ling and using banelings to force protoss to spread out making hydra much stronger or lose their meatshield leaving the colossi vulnerable to ling/hydra (zerglings do fairly well vs colossi if they can reach them.) This is one of the few times I'd make speedlings vs protoss.
-The second is going for infestors and using fungal growth to keep zealots away, and coli from kiting, then using NP on the coli. The problem I forsee is that getting enough infestors while keeping a decent hydracount might prove impossible. It might be better open roach in this scenario and get a few extra queens for AA.
-The third is getting corruptors but honestly I find them ineffective and it's impossible to know what ratio of corruptor/ground you need.
edit: fungal doesn't stop stalkers from blinking sadly =[
Glad you've backed off Sheth. He's a good player, and more impressively, insanely patient and nice. He's taken crap from a lot of lesser players in this thread and has yet to lose his cool. Plus he PMed me about zealot micro. Nice guy.
Anyway, regarding the content of your post....I'd disagree about a bunch of things. First, zerglings are a very good option in ZvP. Roach tech is a big expense in the early game, and its' best to avoid it if possible since roaches can only be used defensively till lair. Second, early zergling speed does not put you behind Protoss economically. Sure, it puts you behind where you could have been economically had you lucked into Protoss not rushing, but you're not behind your opponent. It's just a safe way to start that makes sure you're at least even. Third, you mentioned 15 pool 16 hatch against 2-gate. That's a certain loss against any good player on a lot of maps. Fourth, you definitely can make zerglings against 1-base Protoss. Watch an Idra or Artosis replay. They delay hydras until they have a ton of drones to support them, so their 4-gate rush defense is pure lings and spine crawlers. Lastly, corruptors are definitely the best way to handle collosi. There's a reason Blizz gave them bonus damage to massive. And hydra-baneling? Hydras already own gateway units--they just need a meat shield to tank damage for them. Banelings: not the answer.
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Wow Cats I think you are over reacting a bit in some of your posts responding to flopp. Its not like he said "wow sheth's build is terrible" he was just giving some what he finds advice.
You can be a top player but that does not mean someone who is not at your level doesn't know anything (while a lot of the time can be true its just pure ignorant to not consider what he said let alone insult him just because you think your better).
I found it extremely annoying how you talked to him how you automatically assumed you were a ton better and he was a gold player. That is not the attitude you should be responding to his post I am sorry but that is just disrespectful and rude.
While I don't agree with much of what flopp is saying as advice you don't' need to act that way towards him, in future reference would be better if you handled it more maturely not the "insult him and call him a terrible player because I disagree with him".
Now for any top players like Sheth who do guides like this it is awesome and glad he took the time to do it for other players and would like to see a zvt guide at some point in the future to see if his style I might get some better idea's for zvt (that matchup is my weird matchup I do extremely good at it some times, others its terrible). Hopefully Sheth if you do a zvt guide I can steal some idea's from you
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On July 02 2010 11:20 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2010 01:39 Floophead_III wrote: There's a lot of good advice in this thread, though I'm curious as to why you go early lingspeed. I find speedlings to be incredibly inefficient and uneffective units in ZvP and gassing that early makes you significantly behind if you don't deal some sort of damage or force a reaction, even if you do pull off at 100 and drone heavily.
I do agree that 14 hatch is a super risky low gain build and should only be used in the same way that 1 rax FE (vs P) or 3 hatch before pool is used in BW - a slight eco cheese best saved for BOx matches.
My build of choice is 15 pool 16 hatch 15 drone 16 lord then zerglings or drones + queen depending on if you have to defend something. I like to double gas on 24 (right when my first queen pops out) unless I'm fending off some sort of rush in which case it will naturally be a little later.
Something I also do which I think every single zerg should do is throw down 1-2 crawlers as soon as your natural goes up (earlier if you suspect multiple reapers or 2 gate!). I also believe that vs protoss your best choice is 2 hatch hydra. I don't like muta openings since phoenix and archons are quite strong vs them so the only thing they're good vs is robo openings, and often robo openings can get an obs in your base before muta pop so toss can be ready.
A very important thing to do vs 1 base protoss: -make at least 4-5 crawlers. Do NOT make zerglings. Save energy with queens and don't use spawn larvas! You want to have tranfusions ready to keep your crawlers alive as long as possible while you wait for hydras.
-Wall with an evo chamber at your natural! This is great vs meching Terrans too since it mucks up hellions, and it makes zealots much weaker, just like in BW.
-Make sure not to overdrone before hydras are out! Very rarely will protosses stay on 1 base and then not do a massive push. You don't really want to be more than 40 food drones+queens vs a 1 basing protoss is what I found.
For me the scariest thing is fighting a gate/forge expand (very difficult to break) into a 3/4 gate 2 robo blink stalker/coli army. When Protoss plays aggressive with blink stalkers using them for harass until he gets 4-5 colossi it's very difficult make enough stuff to break that giant protoss ball. How do you go about dealing with this?
Currently I've found 3 acceptable solutions, but how viable they are is rather difficult to address.
-The first is going hydra/baneling/ling and using banelings to force protoss to spread out making hydra much stronger or lose their meatshield leaving the colossi vulnerable to ling/hydra (zerglings do fairly well vs colossi if they can reach them.) This is one of the few times I'd make speedlings vs protoss.
-The second is going for infestors and using fungal growth to keep zealots away, and coli from kiting, then using NP on the coli. The problem I forsee is that getting enough infestors while keeping a decent hydracount might prove impossible. It might be better open roach in this scenario and get a few extra queens for AA.
-The third is getting corruptors but honestly I find them ineffective and it's impossible to know what ratio of corruptor/ground you need.
edit: fungal doesn't stop stalkers from blinking sadly =[ Glad you've backed off Sheth. He's a good player, and more impressively, insanely patient and nice. He's taken crap from a lot of lesser players in this thread and has yet to lose his cool. Plus he PMed me about zealot micro. Nice guy. Anyway, regarding the content of your post....I'd disagree about a bunch of things. First, zerglings are a very good option in ZvP. Roach tech is a big expense in the early game, and its' best to avoid it if possible since roaches can only be used defensively till lair. Second, early zergling speed does not put you behind Protoss economically. Sure, it puts you behind where you could have been economically had you lucked into Protoss not rushing, but you're not behind your opponent. It's just a safe way to start that makes sure you're at least even. Third, you mentioned 15 pool 16 hatch against 2-gate. That's a certain loss against any good player on a lot of maps. Fourth, you definitely can make zerglings against 1-base Protoss. Watch an Idra or Artosis replay. They delay hydras until they have a ton of drones to support them, so their 4-gate rush defense is pure lings and spine crawlers. Lastly, corruptors are definitely the best way to handle collosi. There's a reason Blizz gave them bonus damage to massive. And hydra-baneling? Hydras already own gateway units--they just need a meat shield to tank damage for them. Banelings: not the answer.
Well on some blizz maps 15 pool 16 hatch is a little too economic, but on any reasonable rush distance its fine. Quite frankly all the blizzard maps aside from maybe metalopolis are garbage, even LT. Rush distances are really short and every map is abusable. Point is, on maps like steppes, just go 15/14 or 13/12. Vs 2 gate you have to make crawlers in your main before the hatch is done so you can move them down instantly. A crawler in back if your lings/queen is everything.
You definitely can make zerglings vs 1 base protoss on maps with naturals that can't be defended by crawlers alone (scrap, sands, DO). However if given a choice I'd much rather go with pure crawler/queen.
Lastly, Corruptors are of course the best anti colossi unit, but they can't shoot ground and you really can't kill 4-5 colossi fast enough to save your ground army. You'll be left with corruptors vs gateway units which can get real ugly real fast. They do work sometimes, but I don't see them consistently being effective. I see players go corruptors and lose horribly all the time. It might not be a great solution but it probably is the best. Doesn't mean we should stop looking though.
As for hydra/baneling, that's more of an experimental strategy. It doesn't show as much promise as I'd hoped for but it does work if there's low sentry numbers. Just rhrew it out there to see the response mostly.
Edit:
Also Sheth I'd really like to hear your thoughts on ZvT. That's by far my best and most explored matchup (from both sides) and I don't think there's been any good ZvT guides yet.
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Roaming -- I'm sorry that I'm not being very helpful to ya. My whole point of writing this was to help. All I can say is that it made sense to a lot of other people. There are some situations where you can hatch first. Bet you didn't know that? Either way... I'll work on more guides that are simpler to understand. Also possibly shorter... I'll see
It's always helpful to see what other people are thinking, my point was just that if you're going to go to the time of writing up a guide, I'd personally benefit more from some of the ideas behind why you do things than just hard and fast rules. If I don't do exactly what you say blindly I gain nothing without the logic behind it.
However, if i know you're getting ling speed to deal with hellions in a certain match up then it helps not only remember to do it, but gives you purpose to do it.
Best regards. Thanks for taking the time to help us wee peons.
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Nice guide! I'd wish there was a ZvT guide cause i'd like see how a zerg player would think in that match up, since i'm Terran myself. Plus it'd be hot rawr. :D
BTW, love TL for having all these in-depth discussions threads about matchups and strategies etc.
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chozen! completely off topic, but i wanted to say i enjoy your commentaries.
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Real nice guide. EDIT: Make that an awsome guide! "Real nice" doesn't give it nearly enough credit.
Guess I got some a opening to try when Beta comes back. I now normally go 12 pool with 6 early lings and a queen into second queen/second hatch. I agree with needing lings to expand, the probe control on some people is quite impressive
One problem I have now, which I'm guess I will have with your build also, is being terrified of playing blind without having an early lair. I fly my overlord into the Toss base but then I mostly try to position it to see him moving out or to check the timing on his expansion. I never seem to commit it to a suicide scout. I also seem to think it will be impossible for a slow-lord to see the potential stargates if he has a stalker running around... What I do now is get gas around 19, together with the second hatch and spend the first 100 on an early lair, just to be on the safe side.
Do you have the same problem? If I see 5 zealots, I would probably spam some lings or crawlers to hold them off and it seems from your guide you would too. That would mean I have drones on minerals and not on gas. If he has spend his gas on air, I'm pretty much dead. I have a second queen but neither have energy for transfusion (creep tumor and larva take precedence) so I can't seem to win against air. Do you always sack the overlord in that case?
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On July 02 2010 12:00 blade55555 wrote:Wow Cats I think you are over reacting a bit in some of your posts responding to flopp. Its not like he said "wow sheth's build is terrible" he was just giving some what he finds advice. You can be a top player but that does not mean someone who is not at your level doesn't know anything (while a lot of the time can be true its just pure ignorant to not consider what he said let alone insult him just because you think your better). I found it extremely annoying how you talked to him how you automatically assumed you were a ton better and he was a gold player. That is not the attitude you should be responding to his post I am sorry but that is just disrespectful and rude. While I don't agree with much of what flopp is saying as advice you don't' need to act that way towards him, in future reference would be better if you handled it more maturely not the "insult him and call him a terrible player because I disagree with him". Now for any top players like Sheth who do guides like this it is awesome and glad he took the time to do it for other players and would like to see a zvt guide at some point in the future to see if his style I might get some better idea's for zvt (that matchup is my weird matchup I do extremely good at it some times, others its terrible). Hopefully Sheth if you do a zvt guide I can steal some idea's from you
wow blade it looks like you didn't read my last post directed towards him, after he apologized so did I, I made my point, that's all there is to it. My first post is as blatantly honest as he was with his. I was talking with sheth at the time of his post and he just gets frustrated, but is too nice to be a honest, im not.
Its really a shame that you find it annoying, It wouldn't have been any nicer from me to sit down and (im sorry if this is annoying too) waste my time, listing point by point the flaws in his post. Im sorry flop (for going back to where we started here) to explain blade, but seriously speaking that first post does not sound like a question, it sounds like a guide that discredit's sheth's guide, saying stuff doesnt work and how it should be done.
I don't think that a Terran player, who says 'get infestors to stop stalkers from blink' is in a position to correct my teammate, and so I posted my thoughts, straight up, just like he did, really sorry if it offends anyone.
If you have any more criticism related to behavior or anything else, please pm me Btw my name is CatZ not CatS, I don't think I am a 'pure ignorant' in this regard, I didn't insult him (but you insulted me plenty), I stated my opinion just like he did his.
I did not call him a terrible player, I simply stated that based on his display of knowledge of Zerg (that we later learned is his offrace) I didn't think he'd be above gold, I don't see how that's offensive, but I have plenty of friends in gold that know fungal growth won't stop stalkers from blinking, or that Corruptors are a perfectly fine and viable answer to colossus, I don't want to say the best because the game isnt close to fully explored at this point, but I will say at this point in time, it is the most acceptable/viable.
So Blake pm me if you need to say anything else, and for the record I find your post as disrespectful / pure ignorant / rude / annoying & immature, as you found mine to be.
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Great early game ZvP tips Sheth, thanks for the effort you put into this.
What are your thoughts on roach openings? I find that most P's don't expect them post-patch and I can win a lot of games with roach all-ins. If I scout adequate defense I can use my roaches to deny scouting, maintain the threat of an all-in and power as with a standard build.
Also, I'd kill for a ZvT guide one of these days. :D
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On July 02 2010 01:39 Floophead_III wrote:
Currently I've found 3 acceptable solutions, but how viable they are is rather difficult to address.
-The first is going hydra/baneling/ling and using banelings to force protoss to spread out making hydra much stronger or lose their meatshield leaving the colossi vulnerable to ling/hydra (zerglings do fairly well vs colossi if they can reach them.) This is one of the few times I'd make speedlings vs protoss.
-The second is going for infestors and using fungal growth to keep zealots away, and coli from kiting, then using NP on the coli. The problem I forsee is that getting enough infestors while keeping a decent hydracount might prove impossible. It might be better open roach in this scenario and get a few extra queens for AA.
-The third is getting corruptors but honestly I find them ineffective and it's impossible to know what ratio of corruptor/ground you need.
edit: fungal doesn't stop stalkers from blinking sadly =[
What's the reason you don't use Ultras?
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Wooot! Pretty solid. I do pretty much all of that. I wish you were a little more specific on build orders tho. =P
I'd definitely read ZvT/ZvZ guides tho so if you're up for it I'm sure it would be appreciated. xD
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I don't know if i should be saying this or not, but the argument between CatZ and Floop kinda entertained me a little bit as i read the posts. I do somewhat understand how both of you guys felt offended but I prefer not taking sides. Besides this thread is to help people with ZvP, and not to argue. Now that you guys apologized to each other, the argument should be officially over. Thus no one should drag on this argument again. Don't even remotely bring up the argument (blade and others). Instead assist players that need help in ZvP which is the purpose of this thread and Sheth's 'blood and sweat'.
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United States2095 Posts
Time for another post to address questions. Last post before I put up a new guide here... =.=
kcdc -- <3 Thanks a lot for sticking up for me. o.o;
Blade -- I'm glad you enjoyed the guide. Not going to go into the catz / floop issue here lol.
Floop -- Um what can I say... You've spawned people asking you questions about your posts in my thread! Cant' say whether that's a good thing or a kinda sneaky thing. I think I'm landing dead in the middle :p
Roaming -- Ok I'll work on that next time! More reasoning behind stuff... Just can't make it too long and some of its fairly obvious (first units after a pool are lings + queen) for instance.
Calamity -- Thanks! Yeah I hadn't seen that many guides like this so I figured I'd make one :D
haLs -- Thanks bud. (What commentaries?)
NeoLearner -- I know what your saying. If you don't want to sacrifice an overlord at the chance you'll find the tech you have other options. You can constantly keep a ling at the front of the base. You can make 3 queens and a few spines just to be safe. You can make a lot of lings so if he pushes out you can either counter or flank him from behind when he attacks your main. There are plenty of options vs. an attack. Vs. flying units with three queens you should be able to see it early enough to start making 2 more queens and defending with your three and only attacking if your sure you won't lose a queen without killing a void! Pheonix's can make this tough.. If you have any other questions just PM me, I've gotta get working on this other thing and I can't when I'm posting semi-guides in responses XD! <3
Catz -- You so pro :D
3clipse -- Roaches have their benefits and their negatives. Their slow so there not great attacking units unless you get a certain ammount without him see'ing them. Then you can kind of push with those roaches and hopefully do some dmg that he wasn't expecting. Roaches are also super for defending early stuff (I still recomend lings queens and spines).
FTemplar -- You hurt me sir.
Darkn3ss-- Ok darkn3ss I've gotta be more specific and work on providing more of a reason behind why I do things while making it shorter! Got alot of really good feedback. Hopefully I can actually apply it :D!
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Nice read, keep it up
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Hi Sheth, thanks for the guide. I plan to test it out myself once the beta returns. My preference is to take bits and pieces from the wisdom of others and work out what I can use for myself rather than just copy verbatim. Even if it means reinventing the wheel as I tend to learn more effectively this way.
One question I have is about micro'ing the queens and zerglings for defensive purposes. I've tried kiting with the queen against zealots in the unit tester map and comparing the results to just a-moving and due to the fact that even on creep, the queen isn't fast enough to keep out of range, there seems to be little benefit. Micro'ing with zerglings really only involves proper positioning to ensure you get a surround. So I often try to hide them on either side of an expected attack path so they can 'swarm' in from both sides around those first few zealots. This has worked well for me. You also mentioned that it is ok to let the hatchery take some damage and I've found this to be invaluable as I can often get a few free hits on the backside of a zealot who is attacking the hatch before they turn around and try to fend off the zerglings. This back-and-forth can buy the time needed to get out a few more lings and solidify the defence.
So, just curious about your thoughts on micro'ing queens/zerglings against the first zealot rush.
Thanks.
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The formatting helped a lot on the OP, a lot easier to handle. Keep adding to it!
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iNcontroL
USA29055 Posts
On July 02 2010 02:05 CatZ.root wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2010 01:39 Floophead_III wrote: There's a lot of good advice in this thread, though I'm curious as to why you go early lingspeed. I find speedlings to be incredibly inefficient and uneffective units in ZvP and gassing that early makes you significantly behind if you don't deal some sort of damage or force a reaction, even if you do pull off at 100 and drone heavily.
I do agree that 14 hatch is a super risky low gain build and should only be used in the same way that 1 rax FE (vs P) or 3 hatch before pool is used in BW - a slight eco cheese best saved for BOx matches.
My build of choice is 15 pool 16 hatch 15 drone 16 lord then zerglings or drones + queen depending on if you have to defend something. I like to double gas on 24 (right when my first queen pops out) unless I'm fending off some sort of rush in which case it will naturally be a little later.
Something I also do which I think every single zerg should do is throw down 1-2 crawlers as soon as your natural goes up (earlier if you suspect multiple reapers or 2 gate!). I also believe that vs protoss your best choice is 2 hatch hydra. I don't like muta openings since phoenix and archons are quite strong vs them so the only thing they're good vs is robo openings, and often robo openings can get an obs in your base before muta pop so toss can be ready.
A very important thing to do vs 1 base protoss: -make at least 4-5 crawlers. Do NOT make zerglings. Save energy with queens and don't use spawn larvas! You want to have tranfusions ready to keep your crawlers alive as long as possible while you wait for hydras.
-Wall with an evo chamber at your natural! This is great vs meching Terrans too since it mucks up hellions, and it makes zealots much weaker, just like in BW.
-Make sure not to overdrone before hydras are out! Very rarely will protosses stay on 1 base and then not do a massive push. You don't really want to be more than 40 food drones+queens vs a 1 basing protoss is what I found.
For me the scariest thing is fighting a gate/forge expand (very difficult to break) into a 3/4 gate 2 robo blink stalker/coli army. When Protoss plays aggressive with blink stalkers using them for harass until he gets 4-5 colossi it's very difficult make enough stuff to break that giant protoss ball. How do you go about dealing with this?
Currently I've found 3 acceptable solutions, but how viable they are is rather difficult to address.
-The first is going hydra/baneling/ling and using banelings to force protoss to spread out making hydra much stronger or lose their meatshield leaving the colossi vulnerable to ling/hydra (zerglings do fairly well vs colossi if they can reach them.) This is one of the few times I'd make speedlings vs protoss.
-The second is going for infestors and using fungal growth to keep zealots away, stalkers from blinking, and coli from kiting, then using NP on the coli. The problem I forsee is that getting enough infestors while keeping a decent hydracount might prove impossible. It might be better open roach in this scenario and get a few extra queens for AA.
-The third is getting corruptors but honestly I find them ineffective and it's impossible to know what ratio of corruptor/ground you need. I just read your post, good sir, clearly you do not play at high diamond levels, or low diamond levels for that matter. If I had to guess by your display of knowledge in this threat, you're a gold player at best (i hope no offense taken). Sheth on the other hand is one of the best zergs in north america and perhaps the world currently, the fact that you Mr.Floophead The Third are trying to teach and tell a multiple high level tournament winner, Team USA 'Ace', 7 week ITL Championship holder what is right and wrong makes me a little bit sick, just a little bit... your "Guide", or reply or whatever you were trying to archieve is VERY VERY faulty IN MY OPINION, notice how I am not absolute when I talk even when I know for a fact that I am a far better player than you. your guide as a matter of fact is SO faulty I could've just replied in 1 sentence and made you look bad instead of wasting time writing all this : fungal growth does NOT stop stalkers from blinking
If I were Sheth I probably wouldn't answer, if you want to make your own threat and guide by all means do, but a friendly warning to you sir: you clearly lack the knowledge to do so and you will look very very bad.
Catz.. this post is a great example of what is wrong with the SC2 forum. Sheth has accomplished great things sure, that in no way shape or form makes him auto correct over everyone else all the time. In fact if he wants to make a thread discussing ZvP he sure as hell should be prepared for people to critique it and discuss the stuff.
Please STOP waving credentials around like that means everyone has to shut up and listen. Everyone is diamond. Everyone has an opinion of what is good/bad etc in the BETA of a game that isn't released yet. Sure some are wrong and sure some are right but if we got in a beta dick waving contest each time we'd all look like monkeys.
STOP PLZ
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[D] for discuss, [G] for guide, last I checked.
Sure you can discuss a guide, but posting a Guide on top of a guide is plain disrespectful for me.
Sure 'waving dick' arround isn't the best way to do things (I think we both know that), He was at fault and so was I, for that we both apologized!
Sheth and I were on vent at the time of his post, he didn't feel like answering, he was frustrated to see his post, so was I, and I replied without thinking carefully enough, much like you've done in MANY occasions.
if you want to further discuss dick waving, or anything else please send me a PM, manner lessons and flame wars are a greater example of what's wrong with the SC2 forum, in my opinion.
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On July 03 2010 08:57 {88}iNcontroL wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2010 02:05 CatZ.root wrote:On July 02 2010 01:39 Floophead_III wrote: There's a lot of good advice in this thread, though I'm curious as to why you go early lingspeed. I find speedlings to be incredibly inefficient and uneffective units in ZvP and gassing that early makes you significantly behind if you don't deal some sort of damage or force a reaction, even if you do pull off at 100 and drone heavily.
I do agree that 14 hatch is a super risky low gain build and should only be used in the same way that 1 rax FE (vs P) or 3 hatch before pool is used in BW - a slight eco cheese best saved for BOx matches.
My build of choice is 15 pool 16 hatch 15 drone 16 lord then zerglings or drones + queen depending on if you have to defend something. I like to double gas on 24 (right when my first queen pops out) unless I'm fending off some sort of rush in which case it will naturally be a little later.
Something I also do which I think every single zerg should do is throw down 1-2 crawlers as soon as your natural goes up (earlier if you suspect multiple reapers or 2 gate!). I also believe that vs protoss your best choice is 2 hatch hydra. I don't like muta openings since phoenix and archons are quite strong vs them so the only thing they're good vs is robo openings, and often robo openings can get an obs in your base before muta pop so toss can be ready.
A very important thing to do vs 1 base protoss: -make at least 4-5 crawlers. Do NOT make zerglings. Save energy with queens and don't use spawn larvas! You want to have tranfusions ready to keep your crawlers alive as long as possible while you wait for hydras.
-Wall with an evo chamber at your natural! This is great vs meching Terrans too since it mucks up hellions, and it makes zealots much weaker, just like in BW.
-Make sure not to overdrone before hydras are out! Very rarely will protosses stay on 1 base and then not do a massive push. You don't really want to be more than 40 food drones+queens vs a 1 basing protoss is what I found.
For me the scariest thing is fighting a gate/forge expand (very difficult to break) into a 3/4 gate 2 robo blink stalker/coli army. When Protoss plays aggressive with blink stalkers using them for harass until he gets 4-5 colossi it's very difficult make enough stuff to break that giant protoss ball. How do you go about dealing with this?
Currently I've found 3 acceptable solutions, but how viable they are is rather difficult to address.
-The first is going hydra/baneling/ling and using banelings to force protoss to spread out making hydra much stronger or lose their meatshield leaving the colossi vulnerable to ling/hydra (zerglings do fairly well vs colossi if they can reach them.) This is one of the few times I'd make speedlings vs protoss.
-The second is going for infestors and using fungal growth to keep zealots away, stalkers from blinking, and coli from kiting, then using NP on the coli. The problem I forsee is that getting enough infestors while keeping a decent hydracount might prove impossible. It might be better open roach in this scenario and get a few extra queens for AA.
-The third is getting corruptors but honestly I find them ineffective and it's impossible to know what ratio of corruptor/ground you need. I just read your post, good sir, clearly you do not play at high diamond levels, or low diamond levels for that matter. If I had to guess by your display of knowledge in this threat, you're a gold player at best (i hope no offense taken). Sheth on the other hand is one of the best zergs in north america and perhaps the world currently, the fact that you Mr.Floophead The Third are trying to teach and tell a multiple high level tournament winner, Team USA 'Ace', 7 week ITL Championship holder what is right and wrong makes me a little bit sick, just a little bit... your "Guide", or reply or whatever you were trying to archieve is VERY VERY faulty IN MY OPINION, notice how I am not absolute when I talk even when I know for a fact that I am a far better player than you. your guide as a matter of fact is SO faulty I could've just replied in 1 sentence and made you look bad instead of wasting time writing all this : fungal growth does NOT stop stalkers from blinking
If I were Sheth I probably wouldn't answer, if you want to make your own threat and guide by all means do, but a friendly warning to you sir: you clearly lack the knowledge to do so and you will look very very bad. Catz.. this post is a great example of what is wrong with the SC2 forum. Sheth has accomplished great things sure, that in no way shape or form makes him auto correct over everyone else all the time. In fact if he wants to make a thread discussing ZvP he sure as hell should be prepared for people to critique it and discuss the stuff. Please STOP waving credentials around like that means everyone has to shut up and listen. Everyone is diamond. Everyone has an opinion of what is good/bad etc in the BETA of a game that isn't released yet. Sure some are wrong and sure some are right but if we got in a beta dick waving contest each time we'd all look like monkeys. STOP PLZ
With all due respect - if this is Sheth's thread, I think that people should be asking him questions about his builds - not posting theirs.
There's so much misinformation out there, it's tough enough for a player who's just starting out to find a good thread without it being poisoned by people's "Never get lings or use spawn larvae and always wall off with Evo chambers" builds.
If someone is posting their ideas (Especially in another person's thread), it's much more productive to be blunt than have Bronze and Silver players doing some wonky BO because they don't know any better.
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For 2 gate zealot pressure, you seem to prefer zerglings with spinecrawlers over roaches. Do you think that helps if the Protoss player backs off then does an aggressive 5 gate push once he gets that second expansion up behind his two gateways? I've found it good to just force field some of the lings off of you and find a hole in the spine-crawler defense. Don't you think roaches might be a better choice? That's what I have been having issues with when I try to be aggressive against Zerg.
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Well, a couple points. The reason I say not to make lings is because if you didn't open with lingspeed they're pretty much worthless. Obviously Sheth's style promotes making lings since he gets early speed. It's a choice is all. It isn't logical to make slowlings if you can help it. I think it's important players know that if you don't get lingspeed you shouldn't make lings.
Ultras are not in time for a protoss midgame push from what I've seen. They are however probably your best choice if you can live long enough to get them out. Does anyone have a build that gets a reasonable number of ultras out on time without staying on 2 base?
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iNcontroL
USA29055 Posts
On July 03 2010 10:13 FaZe wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2010 08:57 {88}iNcontroL wrote:On July 02 2010 02:05 CatZ.root wrote:On July 02 2010 01:39 Floophead_III wrote: There's a lot of good advice in this thread, though I'm curious as to why you go early lingspeed. I find speedlings to be incredibly inefficient and uneffective units in ZvP and gassing that early makes you significantly behind if you don't deal some sort of damage or force a reaction, even if you do pull off at 100 and drone heavily.
I do agree that 14 hatch is a super risky low gain build and should only be used in the same way that 1 rax FE (vs P) or 3 hatch before pool is used in BW - a slight eco cheese best saved for BOx matches.
My build of choice is 15 pool 16 hatch 15 drone 16 lord then zerglings or drones + queen depending on if you have to defend something. I like to double gas on 24 (right when my first queen pops out) unless I'm fending off some sort of rush in which case it will naturally be a little later.
Something I also do which I think every single zerg should do is throw down 1-2 crawlers as soon as your natural goes up (earlier if you suspect multiple reapers or 2 gate!). I also believe that vs protoss your best choice is 2 hatch hydra. I don't like muta openings since phoenix and archons are quite strong vs them so the only thing they're good vs is robo openings, and often robo openings can get an obs in your base before muta pop so toss can be ready.
A very important thing to do vs 1 base protoss: -make at least 4-5 crawlers. Do NOT make zerglings. Save energy with queens and don't use spawn larvas! You want to have tranfusions ready to keep your crawlers alive as long as possible while you wait for hydras.
-Wall with an evo chamber at your natural! This is great vs meching Terrans too since it mucks up hellions, and it makes zealots much weaker, just like in BW.
-Make sure not to overdrone before hydras are out! Very rarely will protosses stay on 1 base and then not do a massive push. You don't really want to be more than 40 food drones+queens vs a 1 basing protoss is what I found.
For me the scariest thing is fighting a gate/forge expand (very difficult to break) into a 3/4 gate 2 robo blink stalker/coli army. When Protoss plays aggressive with blink stalkers using them for harass until he gets 4-5 colossi it's very difficult make enough stuff to break that giant protoss ball. How do you go about dealing with this?
Currently I've found 3 acceptable solutions, but how viable they are is rather difficult to address.
-The first is going hydra/baneling/ling and using banelings to force protoss to spread out making hydra much stronger or lose their meatshield leaving the colossi vulnerable to ling/hydra (zerglings do fairly well vs colossi if they can reach them.) This is one of the few times I'd make speedlings vs protoss.
-The second is going for infestors and using fungal growth to keep zealots away, stalkers from blinking, and coli from kiting, then using NP on the coli. The problem I forsee is that getting enough infestors while keeping a decent hydracount might prove impossible. It might be better open roach in this scenario and get a few extra queens for AA.
-The third is getting corruptors but honestly I find them ineffective and it's impossible to know what ratio of corruptor/ground you need. I just read your post, good sir, clearly you do not play at high diamond levels, or low diamond levels for that matter. If I had to guess by your display of knowledge in this threat, you're a gold player at best (i hope no offense taken). Sheth on the other hand is one of the best zergs in north america and perhaps the world currently, the fact that you Mr.Floophead The Third are trying to teach and tell a multiple high level tournament winner, Team USA 'Ace', 7 week ITL Championship holder what is right and wrong makes me a little bit sick, just a little bit... your "Guide", or reply or whatever you were trying to archieve is VERY VERY faulty IN MY OPINION, notice how I am not absolute when I talk even when I know for a fact that I am a far better player than you. your guide as a matter of fact is SO faulty I could've just replied in 1 sentence and made you look bad instead of wasting time writing all this : fungal growth does NOT stop stalkers from blinking
If I were Sheth I probably wouldn't answer, if you want to make your own threat and guide by all means do, but a friendly warning to you sir: you clearly lack the knowledge to do so and you will look very very bad. Catz.. this post is a great example of what is wrong with the SC2 forum. Sheth has accomplished great things sure, that in no way shape or form makes him auto correct over everyone else all the time. In fact if he wants to make a thread discussing ZvP he sure as hell should be prepared for people to critique it and discuss the stuff. Please STOP waving credentials around like that means everyone has to shut up and listen. Everyone is diamond. Everyone has an opinion of what is good/bad etc in the BETA of a game that isn't released yet. Sure some are wrong and sure some are right but if we got in a beta dick waving contest each time we'd all look like monkeys. STOP PLZ With all due respect - if this is Sheth's thread, I think that people should be asking him questions about his builds - not posting theirs. There's so much misinformation out there, it's tough enough for a player who's just starting out to find a good thread without it being poisoned by people's "Never get lings or use spawn larvae and always wall off with Evo chambers" builds. If someone is posting their ideas (Especially in another person's thread), it's much more productive to be blunt than have Bronze and Silver players doing some wonky BO because they don't know any better.
With all due respect that isn't how forums work. If the post is topical IE he is arguing for refined methods/preferences etc etc.. then it is fine.
It isn't like someone makes a thread and we are only allowed to ask questions about it or say "cool" or "bad" ??
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iNcontroL
USA29055 Posts
also that was a minor point I was making. Catz was being a e-thug and claiming some kind of superiority through sheth's ITL titles lol and why that meant he was more right.
it's a bad trend with sc2 players. Everyone and their mother is diamond rank so somehow everyone thinks they are more right or something.
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On July 03 2010 03:57 3clipse wrote: What are your thoughts on roach openings? I find that most P's don't expect them post-patch and I can win a lot of games with roach all-ins. If I scout adequate defense I can use my roaches to deny scouting, maintain the threat of an all-in and power as with a standard build. In my opinion, it won't matter if a protoss doesn't expect them if he can still scout them and figure it out later (or just be prepared even if unexpected). Roaches are just at a major disadvantage in this game in many (more standard) situations.
A great situation to use roaches though, is when protoss is fast expanding, and it's on a map with a backdoor - incineration zone, kulas ravine, blistering sands (especially), scrap station, or possibly even desert oasis although I doubt they'd FE on that map. You can go 1 base roach with burrow - try to keep it as secret as possible of course though.
Using roaches to deny scouting is a bad idea, due to the fact that they aren't fast (unless they are on both creep and have speed upgrade). You'd have to keep roaches outside their choke, which is an invite to stalkers owning them, or even sentrys blocking them from escaping, and killing with zealots and/or immortal. If you use lings you will keep them in the dark as to what you're getting, as well as keeping your troops pretty safe.
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On July 04 2010 05:51 {88}iNcontroL wrote: also that was a minor point I was making. Catz was being a e-thug and claiming some kind of superiority through sheth's ITL titles lol and why that meant he was more right.
it's a bad trend with sc2 players. Everyone and their mother is diamond rank so somehow everyone thinks they are more right or something.
Yeah I also said the same thing I don't think it was right in any way of how Catz responded in any way. Hopefully next time he doesn't do it like that .
Sheth do you plan on writing a zvt guide soon?
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Back on topic ... Kick ass guide Sheth. I'm pumped for Beta to come back so I can put some of it to action
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this thread is entertaining as hell for all the wrong reasons ;p
About the guide I hope sheth can find the time to add some stuff about ZvZ and ZvT which I find to be my toughest matchups.
Thx
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On July 04 2010 05:51 {88}iNcontroL wrote: also that was a minor point I was making. Catz was being a e-thug and claiming some kind of superiority through sheth's ITL titles lol and why that meant he was more right.
it's a bad trend with sc2 players. Everyone and their mother is diamond rank so somehow everyone thinks they are more right or something.
It's pretty sad an older member is stooping down to the level of all the new members that just flood threads with useless chatter. You said yourself many times that it is a forum, and everyone has there own opinions, yet you rant on at other people for their opinions.
You don't contribute to threads at all, and no one cares more about your opinion than that of anyone else. Every time you talk, you try to make it sound like you are on this pedestal talking down to all the noobs of the world.
For being such an old member of TL, I would expect some respect or maturity, but I guess you can just flood threads with useless comments, clearly stated in the TL rules that you should PM the person if you have a problem with them, in this case being CatZ.
And yes, I did not PM this, because I think it is important other people, especially admins realize that people, especially older members like yourself need to mature up and follow the rules as well.
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i cant believe people talk so much crap on here especially since some of these people see eachother in real life. Using vulgar language and threats on the internet is lame and so is telling someone there opinion is horrible on a game that is still in beta.
no one talk crap about my man blades either or elseee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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On July 04 2010 15:25 everytimee wrote: i cant believe people talk so much crap on here especially since some of these people see eachother in real life. Using vulgar language and threats on the internet is lame and so is telling someone there opinion is horrible on a game that is still in beta.
no one talk crap about my man blades either or elseee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's pretty sad man, there's no doubt. I just wish there was more of an effort from the admins, but it seems that the important aspects are just ignored, and they have more fun banning people who use "troll" than helping the site out.
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On July 04 2010 15:36 skYfiVe wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2010 15:25 everytimee wrote: i cant believe people talk so much crap on here especially since some of these people see eachother in real life. Using vulgar language and threats on the internet is lame and so is telling someone there opinion is horrible on a game that is still in beta.
no one talk crap about my man blades either or elseee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's pretty sad man, there's no doubt. I just wish there was more of an effort from the admins, but it seems that the important aspects are just ignored, and they have more fun banning people who use "troll" than helping the site out.
Oh yeah, you'd know all about that - having been around since April 2010.
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On July 04 2010 16:25 FaZe wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2010 15:36 skYfiVe wrote:On July 04 2010 15:25 everytimee wrote: i cant believe people talk so much crap on here especially since some of these people see eachother in real life. Using vulgar language and threats on the internet is lame and so is telling someone there opinion is horrible on a game that is still in beta.
no one talk crap about my man blades either or elseee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's pretty sad man, there's no doubt. I just wish there was more of an effort from the admins, but it seems that the important aspects are just ignored, and they have more fun banning people who use "troll" than helping the site out. Oh yeah, you'd know all about that - having been around since April 2010.
FaZe please stop waving your credentials arround elitism is never fun
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On July 04 2010 05:51 {88}iNcontroL wrote: also that was a minor point I was making. Catz was being a e-thug and claiming some kind of superiority through sheth's ITL titles lol and why that meant he was more right.
it's a bad trend with sc2 players. Everyone and their mother is diamond rank so somehow everyone thinks they are more right or something.
It's amazing to me, that the same person who would openly accuse me and my ally of "listening to your stream" after losing 4-1 to us, with a ton of viewers watching, is willing to come here and try to teach me how I should behave. See the difference between you being an "e-thug" and me being an "e-thug" is I know when I do wrong and apologize. For this amongst many other reasons (that I have always chosen to ignore to keep a nice professional relationship) it is really hard for me to take any sort of advice from you. I really hope you understand this.
Despite all this I made an effort and explained my reasoning, more than once, for the sake of good will... But you continue to poke at the same issue, why, I don't understand.
but if it will make you stop posting, here you go again: Flop I am sorry (AGAIN), I thought that you posting a guide on top of a guide was disrespectful and replied without thinking carefully enough (AGAIN). I was frustrated, elitism is not a good thing and for this I apologize (AGAIN).
So, (again) next time you have a problem with one of my posts or any other thing, PLEASE, PM me, or talk to a Mod so that they can do their job and fix whatever issue they consider pertinent.
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On July 04 2010 15:25 everytimee wrote: i cant believe people talk so much crap on here especially since some of these people see eachother in real life. Using vulgar language and threats on the internet is lame and so is telling someone there opinion is horrible on a game that is still in beta.
no one talk crap about my man blades either or elseee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No one messes with my everytime or blade!
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The one problem i see with this build is against timing pushes, you sacrifice some eco early on (compared to smth. like 15 pool 16 hatch), but you cannot really put any pressure on the protoss with it. thus you will most likely have less when the protoss pushes out. and even with a more economy oriented build, it is pretty hard to defend against the push.
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Netherlands4511 Posts
lots of egos here - interesting to read.
might check out the guide later
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I really can't believe I didn't find this earlier.
The thing that stunned me most about this thread was finding out Sheth was Chosen. Oh my god.
Was wondering where that Zerg prodigy went. I missed you man.
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For some reason I always thought that all the good players are buddies. Live and learn I guess.
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On July 04 2010 16:37 CatZ.root wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2010 05:51 {88}iNcontroL wrote: also that was a minor point I was making. Catz was being a e-thug and claiming some kind of superiority through sheth's ITL titles lol and why that meant he was more right.
it's a bad trend with sc2 players. Everyone and their mother is diamond rank so somehow everyone thinks they are more right or something. It's amazing to me, that the same person who would openly accuse me and my ally of "listening to your stream" after losing 4-1 to us, with a ton of viewers watching, is willing to come here and try to teach me how I should behave. See the difference between you being an "e-thug" and me being an "e-thug" is I know when I do wrong and apologize. For this amongst many other reasons (that I have always chosen to ignore to keep a nice professional relationship) it is really hard for me to take any sort of advice from you. I really hope you understand this. Despite all this I made an effort and explained my reasoning, more than once, for the sake of good will... But you continue to poke at the same issue, why, I don't understand. but if it will make you stop posting, here you go again: Flop I am sorry (AGAIN), I thought that you posting a guide on top of a guide was disrespectful and replied without thinking carefully enough (AGAIN). I was frustrated, elitism is not a good thing and for this I apologize (AGAIN). So, (again) next time you have a problem with one of my posts or any other thing, PLEASE, PM me, or talk to a Mod so that they can do their job and fix whatever issue they consider pertinent.
Incontrol should probably relax a bit now. It's not a big deal and we all got egos and throw shittalk around like its our job. At least you had 100x the courtesy of the average internet denizen. On top of that you're totally right in that guide on top of guide can be a little undermining (at least the way I wrote it).
Sheth: I've found that at the higher level most people are still struggling with the midgame and there's a lot of opinions and not a lot of concrete arguments yet. Openings and earlygame strategy are very beneficial to the average player, but I'm really interested in how you approach midgame. Any ETA on a section regarding that?
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Sheth: I've found that at the higher level most people are still struggling with the midgame and there's a lot of opinions and not a lot of concrete arguments yet. Openings and earlygame strategy are very beneficial to the average player, but I'm really interested in how you approach midgame. Any ETA on a section regarding that?
I support this. There have been a lot of stuff about zergs early game, but nothing on mid or even lategame.
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United States2095 Posts
I know I said I wasn't going to post again until I had my next guide up. I'm sorry about that. Also over 10k views! Although I'm sure a lot of them are about the flames and what not its still impressive to me! Thanks everyone who read my guide !! :D
StrinterN -- Thanks.
savysmith -- Glad you found some things beneficial in the guide. Zergling and zealot micro is very tricky. Also very tricky to try and explain. The best advice I can give you is to try and finish off zealots. If they live to run away and regain shields they can be very powerful. So its important that if you attack you don't lose zerglings at the cost of easily regenerable shields. Theres more I could say, but I need to work on other stuff right now.
FaZe -- Thanks.
KiwiKaki -- we're pro. =)
Alou -- Good question. Roaches have possibilities for offense and defense. However versus just a 2gate early push I like to defend with queens and zerglings. That way you can do quick pressure, roach is kind of a slow ominous pressure. There are times when roaches are good, like to throw off an opponent or keep him inside of his base or simply to kill his rushing zealots if you don't like zergling micro. I'm just not a big fan of them! :D
Blade -- Yea... I keep working on it and then coming here to respond to posts. Typing large response posts also drains my writing moivation lol. So I'm working on it! (have 4 pages of it done on word... just need to clean it up and edit alot...)
gromz -- Thanks : )
Darkforce -- What push would I have less resources to defend with? Also I assure you this build puts pressure on the protoss! Zerglings with speed and a threat of banelings early on if they fast expoed. It can definetly have a threat :D
ret -- I know right? I keep wanting to do homework or guide work and I just keep reading O.O
Faust -- Haha I'll try and stay back so you can know where I'm at :D
Piski -- Negatory. (At your second post, yeah I'm working on it! :p Would help to have beta back)
Floop -- Right now the ETA is I'm kind of waiting to discuss my guide and ZvT in general with several other zergs. I'm also replying to a lot of stuff in this thread + ofc real life. So I'd say sometime within 3-4 days... (I hope!)
Catz, Incontrol, Everytime, Waffles -- Dance off to the death 10PM meet me at Iceland.
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Are tunneling claw roaches a better way to deal with collosus than corruptors?
Easier to mass, much more effective once the coll are dead, but at the risk of being detected by obs.
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ya. i always have trouble knowing the difference between when the protoss is going a tech voidray rush, or if he's going for a timing ground army push.
if he's doing ground army, i'd rather buff up, but if he's doing void ray push, i need to get lair really fast for hydras.
so seems that i have to sacrifice that overlord every game, but sometimes, it's hard to do that.
cause it's so hard to sacrifice the overlord every game... seems that i'll need to always go for some sort of timing push with zerglings/roach, so during the attack, i can get some scouting info?
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On July 05 2010 03:09 doss wrote: Are tunneling claw roaches a better way to deal with collosus than corruptors?
Easier to mass, much more effective once the coll are dead, but at the risk of being detected by obs.
if they have colossus, they've already got the robo (and even if they rushed to col) they still probably built an observer while the support bay was going down.
unless you see they rushed colossus and have 1 immortal in which case... go for it?
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iNcontroL
USA29055 Posts
@skyfive: wtf? "stoop to their level" a guy was waving his dick around and I said it has to stop.. it's a recognized problem on the forum I am a "old member" of.. so who exactly are you to condemn me for that? What context? I mean you literally laid out the context for WHY I would be disgruntled.. and it isn't really a shocker.
@catz: Dude listen: You were acting like a dick. If you apologized and felt you explained it then lick your wounds and move off. Randomly dropping some incident out of nowhere as some kind of attack on me is so completely immature and random I almost don't even know how to respond?
There is going to be changes in the Sc2 forum very soon. Consider it fair warning from me that I am telling you guys that it will no longer be OK to tell someone they have a lesser opinion or that they have no right contributing when they aren't a platinum this, diamond that or a ITL champ etc. If they are giving effort to contribute they deserve that respect. If they are being an idiot TL will root them out as usual.
Btw this isn't an argument. It is me stating that bad things have been happening and they need to change. Attacking me or telling me to "calm down" won't make these things any less true.
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On July 05 2010 05:05 {88}iNcontroL wrote: @skyfive: wtf? "stoop to their level" a guy was waving his dick around and I said it has to stop.. it's a recognized problem on the forum I am a "old member" of.. so who exactly are you to condemn me for that? What context? I mean you literally laid out the context for WHY I would be disgruntled.. and it isn't really a shocker.
@catz: Dude listen: You were acting like a dick. If you apologized and felt you explained it then lick your wounds and move off. Randomly dropping some incident out of nowhere as some kind of attack on me is so completely immature and random I almost don't even know how to respond?
There is going to be changes in the Sc2 forum very soon. Consider it fair warning from me that I am telling you guys that it will no longer be OK to tell someone they have a lesser opinion or that they have no right contributing when they aren't a platinum this, diamond that or a ITL champ etc. If they are giving effort to contribute they deserve that respect. If they are being an idiot TL will root them out as usual.
Btw this isn't an argument. It is me stating that bad things have been happening and they need to change. Attacking me or telling me to "calm down" won't make these things any less true.
I completely agree with you a hundred percent, I acted like a dick and apologized for it, we're clear on that.
What you consider a "random attack" is just a prime example of why I don't think you're the right person to ask me not to act like a dick, that's all.
Thanks for the fair warnings, now with your blessing, ima 'lick my wounds and move off'.
edit: really sorry about all this Shawny <3 (and everyone else)
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very.. interesting thread. I would organise it a bit better into spoilers though, and add a build counter section (which build is a.. "counter" to another build, etc) otherwise, great post =D
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So what are your thoughts on late game counters to the giant Protoss Ball with ranged Colossus? Some players opt for corruptors and others for infestors to deal with Colossus. The main problem is that Roaches are too supply heavy and Hydras melt too quickly to Colossus. It seems you need a massive eco advantage to come out ahead in the fight.
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Personally, I've been having some trouble with 4 gate all ins on a few specific maps. Blistering Sands and Desert Oasis are good examples. Usually I can hold them off just fine with an appropriate build + lings + spine crawlers on most maps. However, on maps where Z cannot utilize spine crawlers effectively, this opening by P becomes exceptionally difficult to stop. Especially when P just knows how to use force field properly. This spell drastically reduces the effectiveness of the mass ling "counter" to 4 gate.
I was tossing around the idea of possibly having an additional queen or two bringing my total up to 4 for additional ranged support behind the zerglings. The queens are also not particularly vulnerable to the stalker fire unlike roaches. Their damage is also comparable to that of the roach and they don't cost any gas, allowing for a more smooth transition into hydra. Of course, this is all pretty much theory right now.
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So facing a forge wall FE, what timings would you recommend? I've been doing a 14 extractor 14 pool build, but it gets out-macroed pretty easily. What should I do? Getting a third hatch up though...seems pretty risky. Is it worthwhile to just try and survive, macro and get a third up when you've defended the push?
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You try mass roach nydus into main base. That usually works, especially if you send 2 roaches to the front to take his attention away.
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On June 30 2010 14:46 Drazzzt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2010 00:56 Sheth wrote: Drazzt -- Very interesting question. I find that if you go 13 pool it will definetly provide you with enough lings compared with 15 pool. I would compare it with Mondragons 9 hatch 9 pool build vs. the old 12 hatch 11 pool build. 12 hatch is VERY hard to defend a good 2 gate build, where as with 9 hatch 9 pool its easier. Howevever if you just can't hold it with zerglings, a good idea is to make 4-5 roaches to pressure him, but don't feel like you have to kill him. These roaches should just be used to chase zealots and force him to cannon or stalker / sentry. (When you go roaches tho be careful Protoss like to make voidrays vs. roach zergs!)
Thanks for your answer, I like your style of answering to all ppl in the thread btw. GJ. It definitely becomes easier and I sometimes even tried 12 pool to be even more safe, but against very good zeal micro I still have a hard time. Probably my ling micro isnt top notch, but I have to say that compared to SC1 I find it kinda annoying that your lings after popping out are on attack-move towards the rally point (or is there a way to avoid this?). So, if you don't look very closely at your 2nd hatch, your lings tend to sacrifice themselves in no-time against the zeals bashing your hatch (and good protoss move their zeals right to your eggs while hatch-bashing in order to get several hits before you can move the lings away). Using your queen is very dangerous as the zeals come so earlier that you dont have much creep and queens are so awfully slow and die so fast to zeals. Later its getting a little better. One game I lost because the protoss added 3-4 probes to his attacking zeals which is really hardcore. I should've probably just cancelled the hatch as pulling probes costs quite a lot of minerals, but I am not sure. So, this is the reason why I experimented with roach openings in the end expanding only at around 30 supply after having 3-5 roaches (depending on what I scout). At least against 2-gate openings. Protoss has to be very careful then, because I can add a lot of roaches very fast and without cannons he can be in trouble soon. So, when protoss fast-expands and adds cannons you have enough time to pump pure drones later on which will lead to a slight income advantage.
Funny, the new changes exactly dealt with the problems that I mentioned above. Longer Zealot build time and move-rally instead of attack-really. So, your opening might become more viable now at closer distances, Sheth :-).
(unfortunately, I am EU not US, so I couldnt test it)
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oh shit, you are Chosen?? wow, I had no idea. I was assuming for some reason, Sheth was another one of the old XD's/quebecer guys like SLush.. even though you aren't Canadian lol
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As a randomplayer I really hate the zealotnerf from Zs and Ps point of view. I really loved 2gating as P because 90% of the Zergs fastexpanded and you could easily win. But I really loved facing a 2gatepush as Z even more. When I scoutet it, I just onebased roaches and completely skipped lings and demolished the 2gating toss at this point.
With the recent zealotnerf u cant 2gate anymore and as Zerg I double steal gas to force the toss to build zealots and go onebase roach(skipping lings) into gg
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Sheth, please keep it coming! I'm a lower-platinum zerg right now, winning most of my ZvZ and ZvT games but I just get stomped by any gold+ protoss no matter what they do. It seems almost impossible to macro enough to prepare for how quickly my units melt to any early-midgame protoss push, while simultaneously building all the units I need to do it. Even if I stay one base ahead on macro I just can't keep an army that kills a ball of zealots/stalkers + anything (anything being colossi, immortals, or HTs). Often I'm desperately pumping as many lings, roaches, or drones as I can to deal with an early push, and suddenly void rays or phoenixes show up and it's GG... couldn't have teched to anti-air if I wanted to. I need all the advice I can get!
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Nice guide chosen !
I was a little skeptical whether the build was actually effective, but I'm willing to give it a shot. I typically prefer the idra-style build where you're looking to get lings and a quicker expo. I just have the timing memorized to get my 2nd queen out exactly when the 2nd spawn larvae & my natural hatchery is up.
I have been having trouble with those pesky zealot opening builds since the beta came back, so this might help
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Hi, nice guide for a decent ZvP opening, but after reading through the entire thread, I think I agree with Xapti: getting pool, queen, and gas all before starting your expo seems to delay your hatch by too much and hinders your economy too much.
I don't think extractor + 100 gas for ling speed so early is required to hold of early zealots, and that you can do fine with just zerglings + queen, waiting to build your 1st extractor until after you start your expansion (I usually do it around 19-20 supply).
I'm not suggesting you change your pool timing (I also do 13 pool), just to wait longer to get gas. I feel that it slows down your 2base economy by a lot to get gas so early; and really, the whole point of going FE is to get 2 saturated bases as quickly as possible.
However you are definitely a better player than me, so I'll just ask: have you had any experience with waiting until after starting your expo before getting gas? Are you able to hold off aggressive zealots?
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Against p I usually 14 pool 16 hatch on larger maps and seem to do fine. On smaller maps i go 14 gas 13 pool but if they go 2 gate i am still having a hard time dealing with it. What should i do? When should i take my natural? I know i need roaches but do i build the roach waren right after the pool or what? Thank you in advance.
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I find that with the new patch, slings are not so good anymore. P just kills me so fast with FF. I think there is something wrong with FF.
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Very nice guide Sheth! Thanks.
On July 11 2010 17:39 icezar wrote: I find that with the new patch, slings are not so good anymore. P just kills me so fast with FF. I think there is something wrong with FF.
And here I thought Zealots were the ones being nerved. Longer built time, slower attack-rate. What else has changed with the patch to make you come to this conclusion?
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On July 11 2010 19:09 CrudeClown wrote:Very nice guide Sheth! Thanks. Show nested quote +On July 11 2010 17:39 icezar wrote: I find that with the new patch, slings are not so good anymore. P just kills me so fast with FF. I think there is something wrong with FF. And here I thought Zealots were the ones being nerved. Longer built time, slower attack-rate. What else has changed with the patch to make you come to this conclusion?
I just told you, FF! now they are bigger and they trap the lings inside If he does a push with 6Z and 3S no amount of lings will be able to hold it if he knows how to use those FF. Since phase2 is back i have played 36games with 8 losses all against Protos.
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Mmm, I dont know. Have a look at PsyStarcrafts latest video at around 8:40. It all comes down to positioning.
Granted, this has nothing to to with Sheth's Build/Guide, and he is using roaches.
Should be even easier with speed lings which you should have a ton of if he is pressuring (using Sheth's Guide) and you see those coming.
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Sorry for "hijacking" your thread, Sheth. But since it's about ZvP i might aswell post it here. I have a major problem against P when they do a 4-gate timing attack. Is there any way to beat it? I've lost to it three times (yes I scouted them all).
He gets a nice amount of Stalkers, Zealots and Immortals which deals nicely against Muta, ling, roach combo and honestly that's the only thing I can think of.
And to do an early aggression is kind of hard, cause they tend to turtle pretty hard with cannons... So, what the heck should I to do to beat it or make it harder for them? They pretty much walks in and destroy everything.
Yes, I suck. Low/Mid Silver. Anyone got any ideas? :-)
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Some good ideas and tips
Looking forward to reading your guides on ZvT or ZvZ if you plan to make them. Would also be intresting to read some more late- and mid-game tips.
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sheth time for a replay pack!
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Great guide. I love seeing this stuff as I'm still working hard to get better at Zerg.
In general this is the tactic I use versus Protoss. My mid game I transition to a few Hydras (no more than about 6 to 7) and roaches and then finally into Ultras after taking a third and getting upgrades.
In response to some of the comments about Roach builds I'll just post some of my observations. I've been experimenting with Roaches versus speedlings versus Toss and I'm much more comfortable with early speedlings for a few reasons. First, I'm not crazy about roaches without the speed upgrade. Sure they shut down zealots, but with 1 stalker things change very quickly off of creep. Second I find that getting roaches early precludes you getting an FE. I would much rather invest in Spine Crawlers over roaches and use my lings to just barely defend and then surge forward.
I've been modeling my playstyle off of Artosis' ZvP in one of Day9's recent dailies and I've found that ZvP has become one of my most solid match ups.
Finally, on my reasoning for getting Ultras vs Brood Lords: I just don't have a good enough APM to effectively micro air - especially mutalisks. I also think Ultras transition much better upgrade wise and generally wreck typical Protoss armies (think heavy gateway collossi). This is especially true if I'm showing Hydra's in the mid game. If he goes immortals its a pretty simple thing to just pump more hydras.
Anyway a really great guide, that takes into account a lot of the considerations of Zerg openers.
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Great guide! After reading it the first time, I was skeptical that it would work for me, but I tried it out yesterday and it felt more stable and effective than 14 pool 16 hatch. I had much more map control and was less turtley.
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thanks sheth! I really enjoyed it. Can't wait for the ZvT and ZvZ guide.
I need all the help I can get to move out of bronze! sigh....
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Wow Sheth, this is so so helpful thank you. Just read the interview as well, you seem like a cool guy. Like the lack of BM and general coolness Root seems to have, definitely going to be supporting you guys from now on.
Just a quick question: I know you said you may be working on a ZvT or ZvZ guide in the future, but do you mind just posting your basic build order for these matchups?
Just wondering what you very generally like to do versus the other races
Thanks again!
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Please have my babies sheth.
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Great guide, really puts an emphasis on keeping that drone count high while staying safe. ZvP sometimes I fret and don't make enough drones for it to catch me off guard later on.
Looking forward to more guides.
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HOW DO GUIDES LIKE THIS FALL OFF OF THE FIRST PAGE?!?!?
I've already posted in this thread, but thanks again Sheth for all of your hard work. You da man
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United States2095 Posts
New ZvT Guide placed in the OP!!! Please take a look at it, it includes Opening, Middle Game and some End Game. I hope it will help! If you post any more questions I will try and answer them as rapidly as possible!
Ok time to answer all the questions I've missed so far!
CrudeClown: Glad you liked my guide, right now zealots havn't gotten nerfed :D
Icezar: Yea FF's are quiet tough to deal with now.. however getting speedlings and spinecrawlers you can eventually surround if they attack you!
ZergSecs: Against that combination you can do plenty of things! The one I recomend in my ZvP guide is simply to make MANY MANY zerglings with spinecrawlers in your natural! Try it out while teching to hydras. Let me know how it works ^^
Luperts: Thanks :D
Nirvana: Ok I'll puit one in the OP whenever I can!
Chex: Thanks for reading the guide, and ultralisk roach is a very strong combinatoin. Never get too sucked into always doing one build order tho!
bbulzibar: Awesome! Glad you tried it out and liked it. Its by no means a guide saying only do that, but thats a very solid build that I don't see that many zerg's using.
Escape: ZvT guide up! Go check it out :D
Subversion: Thanks for reading my interview. I try and keep a GM attitude, sometimes it falls threw when we don't have beta! Either way I posted my ZvT basic build orders up. My ZvZ changes rapidly... 14 hatch 13 pool, 13 pool 13 gas.. or other build orders for that one.
Antimage: Sure dood!
Galneryus: Thanks, yea making enough drones is tricky, but its definetly very solid and gives you plenty of chances to rebound.
FC.Strike: Ah thanks. I appreciate it! Time to bump it nback to the first page ! ^^
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Just read the ZvT guide. A lot of good stuff in there, though you seem to be pretty adamantly opposed to mutalisk use. Do you ever find a good use for them vs biomech or pure mech?
I'm also not sure why you say to make hydralisks vs biomech. In my experience people who make hydralisks are worse off then people who make pure roach. Have you done extensive testing on this (keep in mind good players will target your hydras with tanks once the banelings are dead.)
Also, how do you upgrade your units vs biomech or mech to prepare for lategame. What upgrades take precedent?
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Thanks again Sheth. I'm definitely going to give the new ZvT guide a thorough read.
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Thanks for the update. However, I would recommend making a new thread for ZvT, since most people won't realize you've updated your thread just by looking at the title in the sidebar.
Its very important to continue scouting here. Send those 2-4 drones to go run up your opponents ramp and to run back. I think you meant "lings."
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What is the best time to get gas against both Terran and Protoss? I usually get my gas at around 20 and my second gas when my lair is about half way done. Is there a better time to get gas? I try to get my Speedling upgrade before any Hellion harass but if they go Reaper, my Speedling upgrade doesn't finish in time.
What to you do against Terran BioMech (Rine/Rauder/Tank/Medivac)? I've been trying to go Ling/Baneling/Muta or Ling/Baneling/Roach but I feel like I cant get my Banelings close enough to kill the Rines. Adding to this, what unit mix do you get late game? I've been trying to do Artosis' Corruptor/Broodlord but the Broodlords get tore up by Vikings and my Corruptors get killed by Marines/Thor.
Thanks in advance
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Thanks for the ZvT guide sheth. Lots of great ideas, you cover many situations and you give reasoning for why to use certain units in certain situations.
I have two questions for ZvT mid-game. You covered what to do against factory w/reactor, factory w/tech lab, factory w/starport (no addon), and starport w/techlab. But there's 2 situations you didn't cover that I'm interested in:
1. Terran FE. Some terran will respond to zerg FE with FE of their own. What is your mid-game response and goals against terran FE?
2. 2+ barracks. So you scout your opponent's wallin, and you see a 2nd barracks building, or possibly you scout a bit late and you see 2 barracks, with a 3rd barracks building. Now what?
Also, some terrans will wallin and make 2 marines, and then hide their tech somewhere in their base that you can't see from the top of the ramp. They could be going mass hellions, igniter hellions, banshees, vikings, thordrop, marine/tank, mech, mass marauders, mass marines, anything. Do you have a catch-all safe build that you use when you are unable to scout? Or do you always sac an overlord if your zerglings don't scout anything useful at the ramp?
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I don't want to speak for sheth but no build is safe against everything. Three anti-cheese side-tracks are throwing up spire, hydralisk den or overlord drop in addition to your preferred style, but I would say you always always sac an overlord unless you're preparing some tight all-in of your own.
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Thanks for writing this guide Sheth! Really helped me out as I started learning to play zerg, and the speedling expand build is starting to become one of my favs in the ZvP matchup.
One problem I'm seeming to have though in the ZvP though is deciding how many spine crawlers will be necessary to defend against the early timing push, and if 4 queens is too many as well. Any good way to tell how many queens/spines are necessary? (I'm usually able to scout the 4-gate or 3-gate pushes, but never too sure how spines I need, same problem with queens).
Also, was just wondering about neural parasite/infestors in general against mech, and if they'd do well against it.
Again, thanks for the great guide!
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On July 24 2010 06:24 XdsZmX wrote: Thanks for writing this guide Sheth! Really helped me out as I started learning to play zerg, and the speedling expand build is starting to become one of my favs in the ZvP matchup.
One problem I'm seeming to have though in the ZvP though is deciding how many spine crawlers will be necessary to defend against the early timing push, and if 4 queens is too many as well. Any good way to tell how many queens/spines are necessary? (I'm usually able to scout the 4-gate or 3-gate pushes, but never too sure how spines I need, same problem with queens).
Also, was just wondering about neural parasite/infestors in general against mech, and if they'd do well against it.
Again, thanks for the great guide!
Usually 3 spines + lings are enough to delay the push until hydralisk come out. Remember to get more than a few lings though. And try to scout his unit combo.
That's at least how I deal with it. But I don't like roaches so maybe someone knows this better than men. I just like to punish the protoss players after his failed push. If you have lost to 4gate pushes you just should watch the replays and think how many sunken's would be needed to defend.
But I'm guessing you want an answer from Sheth so lets see what he will answer
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Great guide Sheth, it's very appreciated!
I would love to hear your opinions or see any replays how you deal with Mech terran players, i'm trying to abuse the fact that they lack mobility (By using Nydus worms and Muta harass mostly, but the main problem is that they often camp in their base, and that usually prevents these harasses from doing enough damage). I usually end up being either contained or losing to their "slow forward push", since all my direct battles with a strong mech army seems to fail. I seem to lose before i can include a large number of high tech units into my army, in most of the games.
(Any ideas how to break a tank contain, or somehow stop or delay the slow mech crawling :D? Does anyone have any special tricks to deal with a Thor, tank, hellion, viking, marine, marauder mix or how to survive the two situations mentioned above?)
Example replay (Mech contain): http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/3661138/ (7 minute mark and beyond)
I'm also having problem with MMM terrans that uses a lot of drop harassment. (Like 1-2 drops at my expansion(s) similary, while also attacking my main with a reasonable force).
(I will try the Zergling, Baneling, Mutalisk style when the game is released, cheers! Any other ideas how to deal with this spesific "heavy drop harass" type of play? I'm having problems to react properly to these harasses, and i usually split my forces to try to win multiple battles at once, even doe i lack the multitasking of controlling more than one battle at a time.)
Example replay (Heavy drop harass): http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/3757580/
Tips from anyone is appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
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Good post sir
Agreed with most of your points on here, though under tips & tricks the changeling tricks will not work until Blizz has fixed the glitch where changelings no longer change color (always red) to match your opponents color/blend in.
Some good content here for the more beginner/mid-level players, thanks for your efforts
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United States2095 Posts
Floophead : I'm not adamantly opposed to mutalisks. I even say I use them in end game vs. bio balls! I find them hard to use against any build with thors tho! (However its good to get muta to force the t to get thors, I just didn't want to go into this!) Yes I'm sure hydras are WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY better then just pure roach. Don't know why you would even think that wasn't true! Upgrades are usually +1 carapace then +1 ranged and +2 cara at same time and continued from there. Sometimes +1 /+1 same time. Depends on so many things... Always get hydralisk range late tho!
Bontez: Thanks, let me know how you like it! Saracen: Thanks Alex! I fixed the typo and I'll probably make a new thread linking to this and a copy on Root gaming's new website! Just wanted to put it up while I'm on vacation for a bit so I'd have something to do. ^_^
Raybasto: Getting either speedlings or roaches early is absolutely nessecary vs. any reaper heavy build. So I recomend putting up alot of spine crawlers and getting roaches instead of just slow lings if you see him going pure reapers. As for early gas, 20 sounds a bout right. As for your second gas, that all depends on your opponents build order.
Blasius: Thanks! Vs. a quick FE my goal is to get a high ammount of drones on my 2 original bases and to get a quick third and go into either muta harass or roach dropship! For your second build order I like speedlings with a few spinecrawlers while I attempt to macro and keep an army growing at the same time.
Shutdown: Somewhat! I don't always sac an overlord, alot of the time sac'ing a ling works or just if you see a fast FE!
XdsZmX: Sooo many speedlings as you slowly tech to hydralisks while putting enough spinecrawlers to wall. Thats how I defend that at least! Also infestors are very bad against pure mech in my experience.... The 12 second nerf made things really complicated, however I havn't fully tested this yet!
Pisky: Thanks, yep that was pretty much my answer too! =)
Infernium: Thanks for asking these questions. I'll post replays that deal with them whenever I get home. I'm on vacation so I don't have replays on this computer. Hopefully I'll get to it soon, but SC2 launch is near, so all bets are off ^^
InfinteIce: Yea hope they fix that glitch soon! It'll still work tho unless they see it on thier screen, generally it takes a few seconds for them to look at the exact area instead of just the minimap! Thanks !
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On July 25 2010 09:19 Sheth wrote:
Blasius: Thanks! Vs. a quick FE my goal is to get a high ammount of drones on my 2 original bases and to get a quick third and go into either muta harass or roach dropship! For your second build order I like speedlings with a few spinecrawlers while I attempt to macro and keep an army growing at the same time.
I've noticed you haven't mentioned banelings at all. Do you ever use banelings? If so, when? Hopefully against something other than pure marine.
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Thanks for the answers Sheth and Piski, must be that my tech is a bit slow, since I do end up with a bit of excessive minerals before I start my lair. Thanks!
Just another question, would you consider getting 4 queens too many for the 13 pool 13 extractor ZvP build? I was thinking it'd be useful for the transfusion and creep tumors.
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Dimaga seems to have great success with baneling bust vs protoss. Would you comment on the usefulness of this?
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I must say, this guide is most impressive. Thanks so much for the effort!
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Shawn, my name isn't Alex lol Hope to see you on B.net
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United States2095 Posts
Daniel! I'm sorry, I for some reason got you mixed up with your friend! Really sorry =(
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Hey, great guide. Although I probably most know of this, it is probably insanely useful for lower ranked players. Anyway I have question, I've been struggling a bit against zeal harrass into FE with a bunch of cannons into quite big gateway army+4 or 6 collosi.(on 2 bases) It's somewhat timing attack, (it comes before I can get enough corruptors and ground army or t3) I've tried many things, it seems hard to counter. My general unit composition is ling+roach+hydra, depending what I see from toss, I adjust balance between them, naturally I builid corruptors to counter collosi.
Even I've heard artosis mentioning he has big problems against it, and idra said he doesn't use corruptors anymore to counter collosi. Yea, I think corruptors kill them to slowly, when collosi are down, my ground units are usually dead.
I've tried roach+hydra 1+attack +1 carapace timing attack just before collosi arrive, it's decent thing but it's pretty close, usually if he didn't trade his early zealots for my lings he manages to survive it. Expanding to 3rd base seems a bit hard, as my army is even weaker than usually. My friend suggested doing like 4 overseers and then contaminate robotics fascility to delay attack, but it's 400 gas which is 8 hydras or 4 corruptors and I doubt if it's good. I thought about massive roach counterattack to stop his FE, but it's allinish and I prefer solid play.
so, dear Sheth, what's your advice about this?
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Excellent write-up. I've been planning to switch from T to Z and this guide has done a great job of putting a lot of information in one place to help make the switch easier.
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great post sheth some of this has really helped improve my openings keep up the good work
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Wow I can't believe I missed this guide. It is incredibly in depth and I would really like to thank sheth for all the effort he put into this!
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On August 04 2010 13:20 ChoboCop wrote: Sheth now plays T... o_O
Is this true?
Anyway, awesome guide sheth <3
Gonna try dropping some infestors with my army against T next time to fungal growth them at the bottom of the ramp :D
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very nice guide, keep up the great work <3
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i love your guides, but i hope you put some replays in a near future, i really like to read and then watch reps.
gl & hf for you!!
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Thanks so much! I am a low gold level player but I still have trouble fending off early zealot rushes. I can never get enough lings out...the best strategy I have tried is a 2nd hatchery in my main and then expanding, but I think it should be possible to defend my expo. Could be compensation for my bad micro abilities, but it's frustrating. I am even struggling with 1v1 ZvP against the computer on hard.
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Hello, I'm a low gold level player as well. It feels like all too often, I scout my opponent teching/macroing up and so I end up pumping drones only to be caught off guard by a surprise push that I usually can't fend off with my small standing army (microing has done very little considering it's a literal steamroll). Is there any advice you could provide on when to build army units and when to work on your economy?
Also, my friend in the platinum league has some weird build orders that incorporates a forge and cannons in his base. If he goes phoenixes or 4 gates, I have trouble dealing with it since hydras/speedlings/roaches seem to melt away instantly with heavy cannon fire. So, even assuming I scout it right and have queens to deal with the phoenixes until hydras/ spores arrive it feels like all I can do is fend off the phoenix harass because attacking his base would be suicide. Should I simply wait it out and try and deny any possible expansion until he runs out of resources?
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i leave a zergling at the opponents natural and the xel naga watchtowers so i can see when he moves out. if you know when hes coming and with what you can build adequate units to defend. a couple spines doesnt hurt.
i dont know when you're putting down your second hatch. delaying it til about 20-25 supply sometimes isnt a bad idea.
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Ok. Here's my big question for you:
I've started doing ignitor hellion expand into multirax/2-3 fact/port rine/tank/hellion/medivac play in midgame. Even if I do no or minimal damage with my initial hellions, the followup attack usually just outright wins, or at least denies a 3rd and puts me in a winning position.
How do you deal with someone who has good control (aka doesn't lose all their rines to banelings) and does that kind of play? I haven't been able to come up with a consistent solution yet.
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Thanks Sheth, you are the man.
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Awesome guide Sheth
One thing I noticed in the protoss guide: "if the protoss doesn’t completely wall of the area into his base it is possible for u to run those zerglings by the cannons and into his main base."
Every other use of the word you is spelled out, that I saw at least.. D:
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A quick question about infestors that I was wondering about. Does fungal growth on workers cause a "your workers are under attack" message? If not, infestor drops could be that much more fun.
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thanks for you very detailed guide! Very helpful for a total SC newbie!
I have another zerg question though:
how do you macro? Do you have all hatcheries in 1 control group or each in a seperate one?Your queens in another or the same one as the hatchery? How do you larva inject quickly? I heard something about backspacing?! What's that about? Do you hotkey your creep tumors to spread them more quickly?
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Northern Ireland22201 Posts
I believe backspace cycles through all your hatcheries. If you have all your queens on the same hotkey, and as long as there is a queen next to each hatchery, if you select all your queens using the hotkey and press backspace, you can cycle through all your hatcheries and smartcast inject larvae. That way you can put all of your hatcheries on a single hotkey as well.
Question about backspace because I never use it: does it just centre the camera on the hatch or does it select it as well
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Only half way through, and I play T myself, but I hope this will give some of those Z's out there a fighting chance!
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@ ahswtini you can modify the mpq so that any key you like is cycle hatches (i made f1 do it for me). For reference, search the forums for the keybind configuration guide i think. Also, thank you Sheth for this guide, vs Terran, what do we do when they try to tank/bunker contain us on our 2base and then push in?
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Sheth,
I read/memorized your ZvT Guide at work today.
When I got home and hopped on SC2, I committed myself to 14 Pool 15 Hatch for Steppes + Kulas, and 14 Hatch 13 Pool on every other map. It really worked. I started finally beating Terran and my confidence has grown after tonight. Thank you.
Here is my ZvT replay that I am most proud of on Steppes of War using your 14 Pool 15 Hatch guide.
http://www.mediafire.com/?7y7b4dh66nx7a9q
Feel free to watch and give feedback if you have free time.
-nairul
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thx men.. i'll check ur reps!
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thanks for writing this, really helps noobs like me
Question: I've been having huge problems scouting terrans early game, overlords can't really make it in to their base and the ramp is blocked so I find myself having to guess what to expect, which doesn't work out well, how do you get around this?? should I be rushing overlord movement? will that come in time before there are siege tanks in my base?
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On August 08 2010 03:22 hex00000 wrote: thanks for writing this, really helps noobs like me
Question: I've been having huge problems scouting terrans early game, overlords can't really make it in to their base and the ramp is blocked so I find myself having to guess what to expect, which doesn't work out well, how do you get around this?? should I be rushing overlord movement? will that come in time before there are siege tanks in my base?
I am definitely not an expert, but what I do (as well as most others) is sacrifice an overlord into the opponents base and get a good scout. I do this every time I feel I need to. There are also different places to strategically put your overlords around their base, so you can quickly do this, or even get sight of tech without a sacrifice.
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Laughed at the "watch a random dimaga replay" bit. Great read, really helping me since I'm pretty terrible at pumping out drones, it's obviously a big deal though.
Waiting on more ZvP stuff. Thanks for the guide!
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Sheth I really like the styles of play that you use in here! This style is pretty similar to the style of play that I like to use
The guide looks really solid so far, thanks! Keep it up man!
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United States2095 Posts
Ok Heya everyone! Time to respond to all the questions, Sorry its taken me so long!! I will be posting a ZvZ guide up fairly shortly! My ZvP Guide is getting translated into Japanese! All exciting news for me. If you want to translate this guide into another language please let me know. Thanks and now to the questions!
Bgrizz -- Heyo, I think its a good idea for you to perhaps make roaches for his early aggression. If your both in very close positions its smart to go roaches into speedling or macro depending on the level of aggression. If lings can't hold for you, try roaches, altho lings should be able to hold if you keep making them and save up larva like I say to in the guide!
Peerless -- This is a tricky subject. You must scout your opponent with lings, and keep a ling at all xel'naga towers and one in front of his base. You should continually pump economy for a good part of the early game until you see him move out. It also helps to have 1-2 spine crawlers and a good amount of lings on standby for defense and harass. For your other question, yes thats what u have to do!
Vaporized -- Very good point! Thats very close to what I said, thanks
Floop -- Good question man! I'm actually really proud of you, please don't take that the wrong way! Honestly a good question man! The best way to do it is to have mutas and an infestor with your army. You can snare his army baneling the marines and run over the rest with mutas. Its one way of doing it, other ways include just using soo many lings and infestors that you surround it. Or just enough roaches / hydralisks that you can simply 1a over his force. I don't recomend hydra / roach.
Ordained -- ♥
Cyprin -- Thanks u.
Bair -- Good question! Does anyone know? Lol! I'll check it out and get back to u!
Math Magician -- I put all of my hatcheries on a different hotkey up to 4 hatcheries. You can't hotkey your creeps, each creep changes hotkey. Search on tl.net for quick injections or something like that and you should find out about backspace.
ahsw -- I'm not sure! You should also check for Zelniq's guide!
.Soul -- Thats the point! Hopefully it will be helpful
Will answer the rest shortly, Have to go coach!
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Thanks for the great guide Sheth!
I'm new to RTS games and decided to choose Zerg as my main race. This has helped a lot with my mid game as that where I was usually falling behind. Also, awesome on getting it translated to Japanese
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What do you think of banelings in ZvP? Any viability whatsoever outside of baneling busts?
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@Sheth: How on earth do you get infestors out in time though? I've discovered that you can just push with 2 tanks and a handful of marines while using ignitor hellions to contain and kill speedlings. You dont' even need stim. That push is so fast that unless you 1 base you only have ling roach baneling to deal with it, and certainly not a significant muta count, maybe 2-3 infestors without energy for a fungal.
It's something I've literally spent all my time since release looking at, and the push is virtually unstoppable. The one thing I think that might work is burrow banelings, but with hellions containing you, I don't see how it's possible to get them in position, much less without being seen where terran just scans and makes them useless.
The worst part is when I push late and am broken, I'm still 2 base to 2 base with a massive eco lead and maybe even a 3rd going up. Aside from losing to an allin counter (which has happened like... twice ever?) I don't see how I lose. I'm not trying to brag at all, cause I'm mechanically inferior to many players, but I just don't seem to lose consistently to anything with this.
Oh and usually the counter to early contains in BW was to turtle with crawlers and send mutas or drop lurkers behind the lines and kill T's eco and force him back or into an allin that he likely won't win. However, what can you drop that actually would do anything without leaving yourself open to 1a wins? Mutas aren't viable because 25s turrets which can kill like 8 mutas with repair are OP.
Honestly, I'm conceding that TvZ is T>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Z. It's that bad.
I'd like to play a few games vs you at some point if you want to see what I'm talking about. I feel so bad for zergs after playing a few dozen practice games. It's not even remotely fair.
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Hey Sheth, I checked it out, and casting fungal growth on workers did not cause any kind of alarm.
Just an idea here, but sneaking 2 infestors into an enemy base, and tossing a dozen or two zerglings at their front door (just a distraction) could let you kill all their workers with FG rather easily and leave them wondering what the hell happened.
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Thanks! This is by far the best guide!!!
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Thank you so much for this sheth! This helped me out a lot, as I have played perhaps about 30 games with zerg and needed some solid guide like this one
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Hey Sheth, what do you do if there is a reaper hopping up and down the high ground at your natural. I send speedlings, he jumps up the cliff, I pull back so he can't shoot them from the high ground. He comes down, attacks my expo, send my lings, jumps back up, I pull lings back, he comes back down, etc.
I first thought queens, but it seems that queens will die if there are enough reapers.
Spine crawlers seem to be a bit hard to get since I just spent money on speedlings, and an expo.
So should I prioritize getting a spine crawler by the cliff, and have an overlord give sight, or get spine crawler after a couple of speedlings?
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Great read, thanks alot for the effort. I play Random and find ZvT one of the hardest matchups
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Hey Sheth,
I like your guide a lot, thx for the work.
I still have some questions, as i am kinda new to Z, switched from Protoss (650+ Diamond) just a few days ago to practice some more macro heavy games.
First question: Most replays i see you playing vs P (I didn't find a lot though) i do not see you getting the early gas (same time as pool), mostly you go for expansion/pool at the same time with added gas later. Are there some special reasons (Map, Lucky Ovi Scout early on so you know positions, etc.) for that?
Second and bigger question:
I have some fellow I'm practicing with (hes P, i guess nearly equally skilled) and i just can't find a way to properly cope with his fast blink stalkers. He completely blocks the choke with GW and Cybcore with a pylon in the middle to avoid busts and goes for blink and mass stalkers coupled with 1 observer to gain uphill vision. He enters with 6-8 Blink stalkers right before the first hydras are about to pop and he keeps adding those stalkers from 3+ gateways. He Avoids fighting anywhere on creep besides edges so he has a safe way out against speedlings. Spines do not help as he just blinks to wherever spines can't reach him. Then he either kills my buildings or my army, depending on my decision to fight or wait. I can barely add more hydras then he adds stalkers on 2 extractors that i have at that point of time and the speedlings don't really make any difference (well that's my biased view after losing 10 games against that). Creep tumors don't work too well for me as i don't have time to spam a lot of them and he keeps destroying them with the observer. I can give you some replay of that if you want to.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
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Thank you for the excellent work, got plenty to practice now
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Thanks for the guide, I'm thinking of playing Zerg for a bit to better understand it. One thing I never see in ZvT (except I believe I saw TLO do it once) is exploiting vulnerabilities of the reactor-switch hellion harass. There's a huge vulnerability where when you lift your factory and your rax to swap positions, you only have either 0 or 1 marine, and zerglings can do a run-in, kill the marine, and run around under the buildings, keeping them from landing. I don't see many Z players exploit this weakness, probably because it does take a lot of micro and attention. Is there a reason this hasn't caught on? I feel like it's a huge opportunity that no Z players attempt to exploit.
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Great guide, but im still having problem with 2 gate openings.
I feel that if they get alot of zealots, I have to get roaches and when i try to counter push them they already have cannons set up. This leaves my behind for my expo while the protoss economy is ahead of mine. Any tips is appreciated.
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One of the most important things is to remove the drones from gas if you have 100 for speed.
There are so many people not doing it and just piling up their gas.
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Sheth - Hero - thanks a ton!
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Thank you, there are no words to describe my feelings for the help I get by this guide. I'm a mid level platinum player and I often struggle because I just can't decide which way I want to go. Can't wait for you to finish this guide so I can keep on improving my play and get promoted to diamond
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On August 16 2010 06:00 Neelson wrote:Thank you, there are no words to describe my feelings for the help I get by this guide. I'm a mid level platinum player and I often struggle because I just can't decide which way I want to go. Can't wait for you to finish this guide so I can keep on improving my play and get promoted to diamond
i would like to do the same.mid level diamond here
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Nice guide, Sheth!
Recently I've been having problems against Protoss players that wall-in their expansion (especially on maps like Lost Temple where it's so easy). I usually try for a quick tech speedling/roach drop or nydus, but if they have even just two well-placed cannons in their main, I can't break their defenses (by the time I get drop capabilities they have a decent number of stalkers).
I'm debating whether to try to take three expansions or try to match their economy with two, and out-tech them. I'm a rank 1 platinum with hopes of being in Diamond soon...
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How do i stop a Protoss playing like this (on LT it works best for Protoss):
He goes 2 Gate into Expo (Gates put before his natural)... If i fast expand i will lose the Expansion (it's not even a contest).. So i go Roaches (14/14 Gas-Pool -> 6 Lings/Speed -> Roach Warren, first "spawn larva goes into 5 Roaches) --> Expansion. Killing him is not possible, he will have gotten a forge and puts 2 Cannons (one on the high cliff, one in his "wall") and expands then.
Now i get my eco going, grab a third.. everything no problem.
He pushes out with 3-4 Colossi and I roll over and die no matter if i went Muta/Ling, Hydra/Roach with some Corruptors... bah. Doesn't even matter. If i goe T3 he attacks to early for it to matter.
I lose every friggin time against every friggin Toss that does a build like this... (seriously, if i hear 1 time more the famous: "Just get 5 Corruptors" i'm gonna smack someone)... I got no big problems with 4 Gate, Templar builds, Voidrays and all this stuff... But this.. Makes me angry... I feel totally helpless against it except i'm way better than my opponent and even then it's a pain in the ass.
I actually rather play against Terran than against this Bullshit.
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Thank you for the assistance.
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I like the 3 changelings to block his ramp while u harass. Fantastic idea even if he knows they rnt his marines/zealots it will still delay him a critical few seconds u need to finish up the harass and leave before he kills ur force. I think if used with nydus against an immobile terran would b a good way to get him out of position then when he kills ur changelings retreat and then attack his front. Make that slow terran move so u can pick him off little by little. (One of the reasons y I think zerg is OP and not terran cuz ppl just havent discovered the true value of zergs speed against the slow armies) I never understand y zerg or protoss just run straight into the terran army like they might win...yeah if u have a scout and catch him right as soon as he unseiges his tanks but thats hard to pull off just cuz the overwhelming strength the terran has. Thx for posting this thread Sheth and thx for reading my post everyone.
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Thanks a ton Sheth. Hope you keep adding to this, as it is the only detailed guide on zerg I can find/trust on the interwebs.
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United States2095 Posts
I will get back to answering comments. Expect a super response shortly. Thanks everyone. <3 Sheth
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I have a question for you
What are you doing vs reapers to mass marauders switch. Seems that all my lings get killed by reapers and than roaches are getting owned by marauders HARD
ALSO... I'm datamining...
what mouse, keybord and head set are you using?
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Liquipedia says to 13Pool 13Gas, but every replay i watch people go
13Gas 13Pool 14Overlord, 14Drone, 15 Queen, 17Ling, Research Speed, 18 Hatch
At least this is how i play it atm, but it feels incorrect. What is the correct BO?
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ahh the classic thread always needs a bump sometimes . thanks peon.
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great guide, thanks for sharing
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On September 10 2010 20:46 amorpheus wrote: great guide, thanks for sharing
Agreed, thank you! Your work is highly appreciated!
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I apologize if this question was answered earlier (fairly sure I didn't read it in the guide.) What are the different circumstances you use the first energy on queen? Like do you ever go tumor first, or what do you suggest doing?
Awesome guide, thanks a bunch!
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Does Sheth still use 13 pool 13 extractor vs P or did it change..?
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@Sheth Is this still valid after the patch 1.1.2 (specially the ZvT)? Any new guides coming soon?
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United States2095 Posts
Well I'm back playing and thinking about SC2. I'm not sure if I'll update this page or if I'll start a new page for a new guide. I'm kind of thinking I want to talk about ZvZ because I don't see too much written about it. A lot of the opening guide information for ZvT is wrong now because of the Barracks requiring a supply depot, but the ZvP stuff is still pretty solid IMO. If you have any questions here I'll try and answer them. (Over 2 pages of old questions I missed I'm not gonna re go over them because you've probably gotten the answer yourself!) So if you want me to answer something while I work on a guide let me know!
I'm finally moving out this month, so I'll start having time for SC2 again. Life is crazy.
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On November 19 2010 02:13 Sheth wrote: Well I'm back playing and thinking about SC2. I'm not sure if I'll update this page or if I'll start a new page for a new guide. I'm kind of thinking I want to talk about ZvZ because I don't see too much written about it. A lot of the opening guide information for ZvT is wrong now because of the Barracks requiring a supply depot, but the ZvP stuff is still pretty solid IMO. If you have any questions here I'll try and answer them. (Over 2 pages of old questions I missed I'm not gonna re go over them because you've probably gotten the answer yourself!) So if you want me to answer something while I work on a guide let me know!
I'm finally moving out this month, so I'll start having time for SC2 again. Life is crazy.
Nice to have you back This thread definitily boosted my zvp back when you started it
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