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Hi All, thanks to the advice of people in Blizzard chat and some things I read on Spawning Tool, I have been playing 28 Roach Warren on ZvT if it is my level. If my enemy is below me, I will play correctly and 3rd hatch on 36 and roach on 43.
In this match, my opponent is the same league, Plat 3, as me. And it felt very even the whole time:
https://drop.sc/replay/7904911
My own analysis is to make more "macro hatchery" to have more larvae to spend my mineral accumulation. And also to split army and so I'm not using F2 as crutch to get units to places.
Thank you in advance to anyone taking the time to watch the replay. What should I work on to make things less even, and like banging my head against the wall, when playing against other plat players? In Blizzard chat, which if you are lucky, there are some good people that will help, but at this point they say "work on everything."
Thanks again, -Arden
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Well first you made 2 overlords instead of 1 at 19/22. The earlier the mistake the worse it is, and that's very early
I don't think your build is very good. For zerg to make roaches on 2 bases and so few drones, you have to commit and kill your opponent. Here you just put yourself behind then drone again. You catch up later economically sure, but you mined less for a while, have no tech, and no extra larvaes from a 3rd hatch.
With zerg allins in general, 3 hatch > 2 hatch because people that spot no 3rd base will just play safe. At your level they see 3 hatches and assume you're playing macro, forgetting the fact that the lack of drones is more telling.
3 spines per bases is way too much, especially this early. You're playing a race which relies on getting as many drones as fast as possible. One spore per mineral line combined with queens and your units is more than enough in 95% cases. You can still do it lategame in your main and latest expansions to defend harassment but that's pretty much it. If I were you I would learn a build that I like and try to replicate it.
Army composition isn't very important in platinum, but roaches lose value later on so avoid massing them. ZvT you could go roach + hydra at least, or for the common hydra-ling-bane style.
The most effective way of improving is always gonna be macro though, so things you can work on (better learn one at a time) : - Injecting regularly - Spending money on larvaes constantly - Not getting supply blocked - Spreading creep after every round of inject
A common mistake from lower leagues is that their larvaes idle for long periods of time. Your larvaes should be used as soon as you have any. Only then should the extra income be spent, if you even have ressources remaining.
To give you an idea, the goal in master's macro games ZvT and ZvP is a 4th base + macro hatch at around 6:00, and the 4th saturated when it finishes (which means 70+ drones on at least 5 gases at ~7.00). Even with a lack of drones the extra hatches are useful for production.
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Hey, I think it's better to keep things simple, so I will only say a few specific things. But one note: don't feel too much pride to share a loss. Find a loss and then ask, "why did I lose?" That's how you learn a lot.
I think your reaction time is really good for your level, and you macro isn't bad for plat 3 at all. But:
-You spent a lot of time early on doing nothing. Spread creep.
Other than that, I want to bring up your decision making.
-Why stay with roaches the whole time? The pros go roach ravager because they're able to push the Terran around with biles and to bleed off the tanks, but even then it's generally a losing strategy against Terran. After your first push, why not go into ling/bling/something?
-At about 8:50ish you push into his 2nd base despite not having the forces to do so. The best way to lose against a Terran when you have an advantage is to try to push into their base and throw away your army. If you want to get to diamond, learn to focus on not letting a Terran take another base.
-Between 11:00 and 12:00 some time you take your whole army to kill his 3rd (good!) and succeed. Then, after your lings and blings are dead and his base is dead...you walk all of your roaches into his marauder/tank army and die. Then you make more roaches. If his marauder/tank placement and control had been better you probably would have lost.
-Eventually you need something that shoots air to kill medivacs, be it hydras or mutas. 2 mutas doesn't cut it.
Those are the main things that were weird. Other than that, if you really want to improve...learn to group your army into hotkeys. It will be weird and annoying but it's the only way to get better. You had 2 evolution chambers hotkeyed.
Hope this helps, I've certainly gone through all of this, too!
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I want to thank you both for taking the time to view the replay and analyze it so thoroughly and thoughtfully. I haven't been playing regularly, but this weekend I put it to it and finally made it into Diamond League!!
It was all thanks to your guys' advice: Spend all larvae, don't throw army away, and don't do bad builds. Spending all larvae was by far the #1 key to ranking up. When I found myself with a bunch of idle larvae, and unsure of what to make, I'd just spend it all on zerglings, no matter what the other player was doing. Often, I had enough gas to bane bust and ling flood. I got almost all the way to diamond just by doing this.
Builds helped too: Yes, that replay was a bad build: I was doing it because at the time I was dying to early cyclone builds. Turns out they weren't early; my opponents and I were just bad. I started playing standard 17-18-17 in all matchups, and made sure to make a ton of queens, blind spores, and spend all larvae on zerglings.
I ended up hoping people would cheese, and it was a cheese ZvZ gone wrong (for the other guy) that was my promo match - Thank you!! ^_^
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