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Lim Hong Gyu was not the first to makes queens in top level ZvT. Perhaps we can attribute that to Zero. He of course is known for mastering it, and crushing Terran's middle game mech switch like no other. But that's not what I'm talking about.
The next chapter in the meta after that is that Terrans have abandoned the whole idea of switching to mech, preferring instead different variants of SK Terran. Some go 1-1-1, others go 5 barracks, some go mass dropships, mass battlcruisers, or others have occasionally gone back to Flash's classic mass tanks with infantry support after splitting the map. But Terrans have clearly learned that too much reliance on tanks leaves you vulnerable to queens. In particular, Larva's queens. Nobody else seems to use queens quite as often or as effectively as him, and mech switch TvZ still seemed effective vs. a lot of Zergs, so I find it rather curious that Terrans are almost never doing it anymore no matter who their opponent is. Perhaps they're just trying to stay ahead of the curve on the changing meta?
Anyway, watching Larva's stream recordings, he seems to be cooking something up as a counter to SK Terran, something that is an old idea but has never quite been taken to this level before, and that is mass hydra/defiler. The old way would be more lurker focused. But think about it. Lurkers are less mobile, their splash damage against sufficiently plagued marines is practically redundant, or overkill. They're prime targets for irradiates because there's a high investment of cost in each unit. I think the wave of the future is really a hydra/ling/defiler backbone. You can make just a few lurkers to supplement tactically, the occasional ultralisk explosion for certain situations, and the queen threat is always looming in case you make too many tanks, but the hydras, with lots of plague, are the real meat.
This is basically a ZvP style, and I think it's really strong. Terran seems to be even less comfortable relying on tanks than Protoss is with relying on templar and reavers. I honestly think that Zerg could become the new dominant race by a lot.
How is this strategy limited? Am I misinterpreting what Larva is up to? How can Terrans respond? Anyone's thoughts?
+ Show Spoiler +www.youtube.comIn this game you can see Larva thrashing Flash in the middle game with this strategy, even though the early game was not normal. Flash got raped by mutas early on, but then Larva let him back into the game. In any case, I think he showed what he is thinking about lately, and how effective it can potentially be.
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Larva didn't 'let' him back into the game. That's just how good Flash is. You can never relax versus him and Terran as a race overall often gets underestimated after they have taken damage. But with vessel tech up and running, they become a threat in an instant.
This was an incredible game and I wouldn't rush to say anything about his meta unless you can offer more than one link. I believe he chose this approach in this game because during the transition period, the only thing keeping Flash alive was his mines. Thus, Larva chose to tech overlord speed and hydra to clear the map of mines and vultures so that he could push defiler while Flash's tank count was still low.
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On August 31 2018 05:06 Q~Bert wrote: Larva didn't 'let' him back into the game. That's just how good Flash is. You can never relax versus him and Terran as a race overall often gets underestimated after they have taken damage. But with vessel tech up and running, they become a threat in an instant.
This was an incredible game and I wouldn't rush to say anything about his meta unless you can offer more than one link. I believe he chose this approach in this game because during the transition period, the only thing keeping Flash alive was his mines. Thus, Larva chose to tech overlord speed and hydra to clear the map of mines and vultures so that he could push defiler while Flash's tank count was still low. I only mentioned the early damage Larva did because I think it slowed Flash down, and some might say that Larva won in the early game, and not the middle game, that his hydras weren't that important here.
He has gone hydras like this a lot lately, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed, so I just wanted to give one example.
I'm pretty sure that Flash would not have made any tanks that early except to counter Larva's hydras. Larva went hydras as a counter to SK terran, which is what every Terran has been doing lately.
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Yea I've been wondering this myself. Back in 2006 when NaDa was the first terran to be truly good at SK terran, sAviOr used this as a counter as well, and was very good at it. Here's one of the best games I've ever seen:
+ Show Spoiler +
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Getting hydra upgrades after defilers is primarily a counter to the popular SK-BC transitions. If they play standard vessel-heavy SK an ultra/ling/defiler/scourge late game is more optimal.
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So sad that Larva after practicing like a madman these years, inventing strats, even crushing the terran God and almost getting into finals on ASL4 now just kinda gives up just because he is stressed and getting insulted by fans. Haters gonna hate! I want Larva seriously to comeback next ASL and crush everyone.
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the very first late game/defilier focused player was actually gorush who had a hydra lurker defilier style that he used to great success on luna, in either late 04 or early 05, but saviors ling/lurker survived the test of time.
Honestly i always thought hydra lurker was discarded too quickly, if not by pros, at least by regular people like us. either mid game or simply a late game transition, it has a lot of validity, especially against 1-1-1 imo. 1-1-1 is susceptible to hydra busts, and has sort of an initially weak push out. The followup push typically is the thing that tends to do more damage since the initial push/opening forces zerg to be tight on drones, but hydra lurker has enough muscle that it allows zerg enough time to redrone.
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I found another upload of the same game between Larva and Flash, just now, which shows both sides from the spectator's POV. I had intended the game to be an example of hydra/defiler against SK Terran, but ironically it turns out that Flash was trying to mech switch again for the first time in forever, and I didn't even realize. Hopefully a better example surfaces soon!
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If hyrdras are the "meat" of your army then it will throw off your mineral/Gas balance for a typical zerg economy. 100 supply of lurkers is 6250 minerals and gas. Or 100 supply ultras is 5000 of each. But 100 supply of hydras would be 7500/2500. You'd need a lot more drones on minerals, and could use fewer bases, but then you'd be more vulnerable to drops.
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That's really interesting, I was wondering why I seldom see Terrans switch to mech nowadays. Zergs must have gotten really good at beating it and Terrans are going back to a more bio focused style. So cool to see this matchup continually evolve after 20 years. Amazing!!!
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Mech being used less doesn't have anything to do with hydras, it's the ling usage and late-game eco that improved a lot in the last couple of years, especially in maps with mineral only expos. Cb and gladiator are good examples while FS remains a bad map for late game ZvT. Other than that, I agree that hydras can be useful mid-late game against both mech and bio (even hydra busts can work early, although contrary to ZvP it's much harder to transition out of those), it's just that the more standard lurker-> fast defiler playstyle leaves little room for further investements until you stabilize on 4 gas bases.
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On August 31 2018 08:40 Dazed. wrote: the very first late game/defilier focused player was actually gorush who had a hydra lurker defilier style that he used to great success on luna, in either late 04 or early 05, but saviors ling/lurker survived the test of time.
Honestly i always thought hydra lurker was discarded too quickly, if not by pros, at least by regular people like us. either mid game or simply a late game transition, it has a lot of validity, especially against 1-1-1 imo. 1-1-1 is susceptible to hydra busts, and has sort of an initially weak push out. The followup push typically is the thing that tends to do more damage since the initial push/opening forces zerg to be tight on drones, but hydra lurker has enough muscle that it allows zerg enough time to redrone. I agree! SK terran has hard time beating hydras backed up by plagues and swarms, the problem comes when the tank count rises. I'd also like to see more hydras vs mech when the supply limit is not too high.
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I don't want to comment this thread I just want to say Skyhigh used nickname Zobs on BattleNet
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This is very interesting, would love to see this kind of play used in the ASL or KSL in the future. With that said, I really want Larva to return to the play in tournaments. I know he has his personal reasons but it's truly a shame to not see a player of this caliber not really competing.
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it would be awesome to see more hydras in zvt! I wonder how early larva is making hydras, and is he not opening 3hatch muta or such variation near always? if not, that would be awesome too
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Watched video. That was Larva identifying the mech transition and massing hydras to punish the transition as hydras can push into widow mines without much casualties and are effective before there are too many tanks out. It's a small timing window, but larva is very good at exploiting that. Anywys the reason you don't see mech transition so much as before is because the tourneys have stopped using Fight Spirit or Fighting Spirit style maps which is basically perfect for mech in ZvT as you can divide the map very easily.
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I don't know about hydra's pushing into mines. It sounds all intuitive but if you look into that video, he lost tons of hydra's to those mines.
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Very interesting thread. Another advantage of going hydras is that the Terran cannot just lift the cc and land it back later like nothing had happened his defensive position has been lost.
This looks like a very powerful timing attack, or it could maybe become a standard transition before tank numbers get too large (I'm not sure how hydras would fare vs large tank numbers).
Hydras can destroy CCs, they are more effective offensively than lurkers against retreating Terran armies and they can destroy vessels, all of which are useful if you want to transition into ultras later.
Do you have any more VODs of effective hydra play where zerg didn't gain a huge advantage early game?
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I just don't think this game is a particularly good example. The muta damage early on was massive (as you mentioned), but I don't think Larva ever let him back in the game. It's hard to close out a game, and Larva just let it get to the point where Flash needed to secure additional expansions, so he would be spread thin. Then he just used his massive lead built us since the muta harass to finish him with a big attack.
If you find a game where this style works when the early/mid game is even, then I think you argument would be a lot more compelling.
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I also kinda wonder what it would be like if you dumped the majority of your gas into defilers.
I think the trouble points are that defilers with plague and consume take a long time to tech up to, you still want three gas before you think about them, and because of all that you have to make an awkward choice about upgrading hydra that aren't useful until you can plague everything like crazy, and getting +1 on lings which is always useful.
I like the idea that vessels swooping in you plague all your stuff would be more difficult with more hydra around. I'm not sure plague would act quickly enough to win a decisive battle if all you had was hydra ling.
I think it would be worth playing with and trying out. Certainly at your own level it could work, just because it's so bizarre. We might not see it ever become a thing at pro level. Lurkers are just so effective, the idea of two or three lurkers plus dark swarm is the main feeling behind Zerg being able to defend and acquire expansions with very little, whether it is their third or their 5th. That gives them more larvae to make drones, allows them to allocate more army to fights across the map rather than at defensive locations, and keeps their upgrades fairly focused throughout the game, because they can forego missile attack.
I think when you start dreaming about a new strat, you should think about what the strengths of the current popular strategies are, and what you're giving up, in order to better evaluate its niche. I do think that hydras have better survivability (as opposed to lings which die whether you win or lose a battle), and I like the idea of a bunch of hydra one-shotting hoards of plagued marines... I just don't know it will actually work out that way when you realise hydra take longer to build than lings, are more expensive (and therefore less expendable), and your opponent might just have so much marine medic that even a few extra defiler aren't enough to plague all of it.
But definitely try it and think about it yourself, it could make for some fun games. I don't think you'll have a lot of luck rushing into hydras early game, but a switch after you have your third comfortable might be good, and the missile upgrades might be possible to ignore anyway if you're really consistent with your plagues.
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