Does anyone wanna play SC2?

[Luan]

So today I played a few ladder games. I drew toss 3 times and lost. Then it decided to give me terran, and I won, easily, and the other player rage-quit

 

[relootz]

saw one demo, it was pretty bad. You guys are bronze level.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

I never claimed to be good.

I got placed in Platinum, btw.

 

[attackfighter]

even for platinum that was just horrible

I watched the first one and between you guys there was only one upgrade and 2 expansions in a 20 minute game

and I like how the zerg player only makes zerglings/banelings, is 20 food behind and complains about balance the whole time. might have helped getting adrenal glands and broodlords, you even had a hive ffs

 

[Der_Unbekannte]

even for platinum that was just horrible

I watched the first one and between you guys there was only one upgrade and 2 expansions in a 20 minute game

and I like how the zerg player only makes zerglings/banelings, is 20 food behind and complains about balance the whole time. might have helped getting adrenal glands and broodlords, you even had a hive ffs

ZOMG! AMATEURS MAKING AMATEURMISTAKES! SC2 IS DUMPING DOWN EVERYTHING! IN SC THERE WEREN'T ANY NOOBS!

Also: A Codexer whining about something without real reason. What a surprise.

 

[attackfighter]

those were subtle pointers not whining, your post definately is whining though

also I didn't even mention SC1, insecure much?

 

[Achilles]

The fact that the Zerg are gimped makes me feel better because I play Zerg exclusively and I suck, but I'm sticking with them. I get frustrated because most of the time I have the economic advantage but I can't field an effective attack against the enemy base.

I usually go for Mutas pretty early, and against protoss I get raped by stalkers and cannons in the enemy base. Any advice?

Against terrans I'm having trouble penetrating their defences and if I don't manage to attack early on, they use Vikings and Thors to destroy my mutas. Are banelings the only option to enter his base?

Finally, what unit would you consider "all-around" useful for the Zerg? Hydras maybe?

 

[attackfighter]

take expos, build creep tumours and wait for enemy to come to you. saw idra doing that a few times, so I'd assume that's how zerg's supposed to play

 

[Overweight Manatee]

saw one demo, it was pretty bad. You guys are bronze level.

Have you seen bronze level players? I've heard that one guy did the 1000 wins achievement by attack moving his initial SCVs to the enemy base, then going AFK. Apparently he won some 35-40% of games that way. I dunno how true this is, but I don't doubt it for a second.

The fact that the Zerg are gimped makes me feel better because I play Zerg exclusively and I suck, but I'm sticking with them. I get frustrated because most of the time I have the economic advantage but I can't field an effective attack against the enemy base.

I usually go for Mutas pretty early, and against protoss I get raped by stalkers and cannons in the enemy base. Any advice?

Against terrans I'm having trouble penetrating their defences and if I don't manage to attack early on, they use Vikings and Thors to destroy my mutas. Are banelings the only option to enter his base?

Finally, what unit would you consider "all-around" useful for the Zerg? Hydras maybe?

Zerg really don't have an all-around useful unit. Whereas terran and protoss can spam a single unit (I beat a diamond protoss friend using NOTHING BUT HELLIONS lol) Zerg will never be able to do that.

Early game Vs Terran Bio (Marine/Marauder): Speedlings and Banelings. If you think you can punish him with an early baneling bust into his base, do it. Low level terrans will probably be easy pickings, just put 5 banelings into a supply depot then run all of your zerglings in. If he has a bunker just ignore it and go straight for the SCVs.
Early game Vs Terran Mech (Hellion): Roaches are best, but speedlings still work until hellions have the blue flames upgrade. Play a defensive battle.

At this point you want to secure an early expansion and try to keep a lead on income the entire game. Against a good Terran, good luck with that . But you probably aren't playing good Terrans (good Terrans = mid to high diamond rank), you are playing bad Terrans, so you have a chance. Keep control of the towers, keep a ling around all the expansions to see when he expands, try to stop that if you have the opportunity. At some point, send an overlord into his base to check for tech. Do this sooner if he isn't expanding, in that case you can probably assume he's teching for something bad. Its probably Banshee's, so scramble for T2 to get Hydra and possibly make a few extra Queens in the meantime. You can use those Queens to heal and spread creep later in the game anyway.

Mid game vs Terran Bio (Marine/Marauder with stim/Medivac): Still speedlings and banelings, but you have to use them a lot better. Get burrow and put them in his path (you can put unburrow to autocast, making them like spider mines). Otherwise attack with zerglings from the front while banelings come in from behind. If you have good map vision, you can see where they are and hopefully exploit this. If you attack head on, the group will just stim and run away while shooting your group, then get into the medivacs. You want the Banelings to hit the marines while the Zerglings clean up the marauders. Banelings suck ass against marauders and take like 5 to kill them, so really try and get them to hit the marines. Keep teching, a few hydra in the back will help and you want some anti air to take down medivacs and whatever other air units he might switch to. If you have the micro, get infestors and use fungal growth on the units. If you do that well then you hardly even need the banelings. Watch for drops into your main, if he can't get in the front door he will probably start poking into your blind side.

Mid game vs Terran Mech (Hellion/Tank/Thor): Roaches with burrow and movement are decent to surprise them. Hydra is good, but you must be spreading creep well enough to actually move them around fast (and if/when the Terran gets Ravens he will just kill your creep tumors, which sucks ass).

Muta can work against both Mech and Bio. Do not under any circumstances attack thors with muta without reading and understanding the information in this thread carefully, because other wise 3 thors can literally kill an infinite force of mutalisks.The main thing you want to do with the muta is to force the terran to get AA and to be afraid to move out and take more bases, because if he spreads to thing he knows you will find a weak point and exploit it. Pray he doesn't go mass vikings though, vikings are fucking ridiculous. You can handle small amounts of them, but 1:1 vikings will rip you to shreds, costs 25% less gas while doing it, and then transform into ground mode and fuck up all your ground forces.

Late game: Use Ultralisks or Broodlords with your army. If you have held on this long in the game, you are probably 5x better then your opponent and once you have units that can actually stand up to him in a direct fight you should be able to run him over no problem.


I don't have as good of knowledge of ZvP because I simply haven't played it as much. Here are some of the general differences:

Zerglings aren't great vs zealots. Good if your opponent likes to spam just stalkers, which is what most seem to rely on later. If the Protoss player has more attack upgrades then you have armor upgrades, Zealots kill Zerglings in two hits. This is very, very bad, so you have to keep their armor up if you are using them.

Banelings pretty much fail against everything but mass zealots.

75% of Protoss are going to do one of two builds: 2 gate early rush, or a 4 warp gate push. Both are defended against by getting sunken colonies at the right time and pumping out speedlings and/or Roaches at the right time (you may have Hydra for the 4 warp gate push as well). Scout it, if you see 2 early gateways early then get your army up fast. If you see 1 warp gate and a cybernetics core spinning, assume its 4 gate. Take an early expansion, pump out drones and get ready to make an army quick. Connect your bases with creep and put the sunken colonies in a place where they can defend the ramp to your base and the expansion. Watch out for tricky protoss proxy pylons that let them summon their army inside your base or whatever.

After you hopefully stop their initial attack, 95% of Protoss (this statistic is not made up, it is a cold hard fact) will go for void rays. Sadly, Void Rays literally have no counter at T2. Both Hydralisks and Muta, while they can take them down, are actually cost-inefficient doing so. But you have to deal with this because you are Zerg and you always fight with weak units. The most important thing is to maintain map sight and try to catch the void rays in the middle of the map or immediately when they are at your base. If they hit your base and your army is out of position, by the time your army gets there they will be at charge level 3 and its pretty much game over because they will absolutely rape your army.

Thankfully, if you counter that void ray attack you have pretty much won the game. Every game I have played against protoss (including low diamond players), they have totally failed to do anything meaningful after their void rays fail. Just take bases, do the best you can to keep them at one base, win the game eventually because you are awesome and they are bad.



Also, note that everything I have said takes a back seat to proper macro. Keep queens spitting larva, keep your bases saturated with workers (2-2.5 per mineral, 3 at most), keep spending your money on SOMETHING.Get used to hotkeying stuff so you can make units instantly right before a big battle is about to start so you can replenish your forces quickly. Have all of these basic essentials figured out then worry about optimizing exactly what units to get and when. Up until you fight platinum players, you can win most games by simply making lots of money quickly and buying any kind of units at all.

 

[Ulminati]

Watching replay #2. Will update the post as I see things.

First off, I'm very mystified by the zerg opening. At 1:47, we have gas before Spawning pool is unorthodox, but OK if you're going for early banelings/speedling sI guess. however, as soon as the gas finishes, KC begins building a spawning pool (so he was looking at hte base) BUT DOES NOT PUT ANY DRONES ON GAS. Wtf? If you're not going to mine the gas asap, get pool first for an earlier queen. The Gas finishes at 2:10, but isn't mined until 3:40. At the same time, KC has 500 minerals without being psi blocked. The opening definately needs some work.

On SMAs side, I'm not sure I agree with building a rax and then getting OC before the first marine, considering he hadn't scouted his opponents base yet. If the zerg were going for a rush, he'd be boned. And not in an arousing fashion.

Around the 4-minute mark, KC has tons of minerals and larvae lounging around unused. I reccomend hotkeying your hatchery and its attendant queen to make sure your larvae are always morphing. On the plus side, your queen injects larvae immediately after spawning.

It's usually a good idea to spawn a second queen. Especially against terran. They're good for warding off early aggression, and the extra energy can be used for spawning creep tumors or transfusing. I like the overlord placement -- too many people forget they can be used as scouts.

Most of the game, SMA has a nearly dead SCV standing at the top xel'naga tower, with an overlord hanging above him. It's cute and all that you can get along, but the SCV is telling SMA exactly when you're pushing out. How about sparing a zergling to eat it?

SMA seems to be going for a strange(ish) build at 4:50. I would've liked to see a reactor going down on that second rax for fast hellions once the factory finishes.

At the 5-minute mark, KC has 450 minerals and map control. This would have been a good time to plop down an expansion. Against bronze up to high platinum, you'll be able to defend your expo on lost temple with a creep tumor, 2 spine crawlers and some speedlings at the choke.

At the 6 minute mark, considering the amount of zerglings KC is making, there's really no excuse not to get zergling speed. It makes them a LOT better at gettign those lovely surrounds that eat terrans dead. Make a mental note to yourself KC: Unless I am going for baneling rushes or another cheese build, my forst 100 gas should go towards researching zergling speed.

SMA has had his tech lab for a while, but continues to produce marines, and is now building a tech lab on his factory. If you're not going to research stuff in your tech lab or build advanced units, there's no sense in gettin git. I notice an armory going up, which I find doubly confusing. If you're going mech, why did you build 2 rax? In fact, why did you build 2 rax when you're only producing off of 1? If you wanted the tech lab for your factory, fly it over. Also, at the 6-minute mark, SMAs mineral line is getting oversaturated. Considering you got supply blocked, it would've been a good time to cut SCV production and get an extra command centre ready.

At the 6-minute mark, both playersa are keeping their resources fairly low, which is good. I'm liking the expansion, KC, but you only have 13 drones and 1 queen. Considering you weren't gettign attacked, you may want to up your drone production so that you're slightly oversaturated when the hatchery pops. That way, you can simply transfer a bunch of drones to yhour expansion and have it mining instantly. Also, you really need to build that extra queen sooner. You haven't begun ypur creep highway yet. Now would also be a very good time for you to tech to lair and make a sweep of the xel'naga towers. A zergling on each would be great for early warning. (A few minutes later, this becomes obvious as your queen finally spawns a tumor and crawls sloooooowly between your 2 hatches to inject larvae. If you'd built the queen way earlier, you'd have had creep halfway across the map fo radded sight and movespeed bonusses. Not to mention a queen ready at both hatcheries).

A VERY DISTRESSING THING I NOTICE AT THE 8 MINUTE MARK: Neither player has a single control group set. WTF!? Control groups on buildings, people. Get your production hotkeyed. For zerg, a trick is to hotkey all your hatcheries to one keyfor quick larvae access. Hotkey all your queens to another key and use inject and click the minimap. The nearest queen will go to the hatchery in question and inject larvae. Makes the timing easier.

Considering neither of you have scouted each other for quite a while at this point, Terran should spend some energy on a scan and Zerg ought to fly an overlord over the terran base to see what production buildings are up. Terran STILL hasn't built a second command centre. WTF? Especially against newer players, you build that ComCent, load some SCVs into it and fly off to take a secondary base if you're worried about holding your natural. In all the time you two have been standing around, SMA could easily have build 2 bunkers and a supply depot to choke off his natural and filled the bunkers with marines.

9 minute mark. Finally some action! I like that KC sends a single sacrificial zergling up to see what happens. Mass marines behind a wall. considering you have gas to spare, I'd love to see a baneling nest at this point. you've made seperate control groups for roaches and lings. If you can lure those marines into chasing your roaches, a ball of surprise banelings from behind will RAEP SMA. The Thor is going to be nasty when it arrives. but mass lings can take it down if the marines are gone. Spare banelings after melting marines should be used to blowing up the wall.

At this point, the tech lab on SMAs barracks has proven itself a total waste. not a single non-marine is produced, and no research is being made from it. Seeing as SMA is going for massed thors at this point, I would've liked to see some upgrades on that armory. KC is getting roach speed, which is nice. I can't overstate how sweet an evo chamber would've been for ground carapace or some melee/ranged attack to upgrade your army considering the low pressure in the opening.

Definately needs more drones on that expansion base, KC. If you can keep the terrans contained and saturate your own bases, you'll start pulling ahead in production. The massed thors are going to be a bitch in a moment though. On the topic of expanding, I'm a bit mystified that you go with 1 gas at your main and 1 at uyour expansion, instead of grabbign 2 at your main way earlier. When you tech to lair is a good time to get that second gas. As soon as lair is up, you'll want to get either mutas or hydras, as those are by far some of the best zerg units. And both cost heaps of gas.

Once you place a creep tumor and it finishes building, you can click it and produce a new tumor with it. I notice you haven't. That creep needs to be spread as a priority, mister. not only will it give your units a huge speed boost, it'll also grant you vision.

When KC complains there's nothing he can do about the walloff, I'm imagining a group of 6 mutas doing a hit & run attack from the north, absolutely buttraping SMAs mineral line. SMA needs to stop clumping all his supply depost together in a corner, as if he were a noob zerg hiding his overlords. Those supply depots go around the peremiter of your base, to warn you of incoming muta harrass.

13-minute mark: Spawning 5 overlords at the same time is overkill. I know it's annoying to get psilocked, but more than 2 is shooting yourself in the foot. Especially since you want to get an army up ASAP for the faceraep that's incoming. Considering you haven't seen the OMGSHITWALLOFDEATH thors that are up, I'm questioning the logic in getting mutas at this point. A bunch of hydras to go with your roaches owuld've been awesome against marines. An evo chamber with some ranged attack upgrades, and roaches in front of hydras to soak damage would've ruined SMAs day. Another trick, since you have a hatchery and see he has a bunch of infantry: Infestors. Fungal growth does ridiculous amounts of damage to massed terran infantry. AND it allows you to run away if things get ugly, or prevents him from fleeting the ball of baneling death. Your build priority of zerglings and roaches is bad against what you've seen so far. you really need to tech switch to hydras, banelings or infestors at this point. Or simply get the infestation pit, go hive and build ultralisks.

Also, no evo-chamber yet? Sheesh. you're severely underestimating the power and importance of getting armor/attack upgrades for your units. A zergling kan kill a marine in 9 hits. A zergling with +2 weapons can kill a marine in 6 hits. By the same logic, a marine kan kill a basic roach in 29 shots. Give the same roach +2 armor, and the marine will take 48 shots to kill it.

When SMAs command centre finishes and begins to upgrade to Orbital Command at 13:50, his minerals are oversaturated. Half of those SCVs should go IMMEDIATELY to the expansion. I cannot stress enough how big a boost to your economy a timely worker transfer is. Given the absurd amount of thors you have, you really should've moved out by now. If nothing else, then to put some pressure on the zerg, who pretty much have free reign of the map. Imagine for a moment if the zerg had taken the invitation you extend by turtling and built another 2-3 expansions. A macroing zerg would've had 10-12 ultralisks by now.

KC -- I'm liking that you move overlords to the islands to spot sneaky expansions. The zergling checking the other expansions is also a nice touch. It may even be worth to place a zergling on permanent station on the most likely expansions to spot when the terran moves out rather than wether he already has. Also, for the love of Kerrigan, KILL THAT SCV AT YOUR XEL'NAGA TOWER!

Big fight at the 14-minute mark. I don't get why you first send in a small wave of zerglings to get devoured by the marines, then your roaches, keeping both your small group of mutas and a larger group of zerglings in reserve. Attack with your whole army at once or not at all. Sending them in piecemeal gets them chewed up. What MIGHT have worked (and might not, given how out-macroed yuou were at this point), would be to send in the roaches first, then zerglings follow up immediately after enganging. (a few banelings or a single infestor with fungal growth would've WRECKED those marines btw). Meanwhile, a sinple forced move from your mutas onto SMAs mineral line would've taken care of his production line nicely. He had no turrets up, and he woul've had to either flee your frontal push or lose his scvs. By the time you spot the thors, you should've retreated with your roaches. There's no shame in fleeing when you're outgunned.

To answer the final question -- What can I do against mass thor?

1: You can scout them. Those thors were hanging around in your opponents base most of the game. Once your hive is up, consider getting overlord speed upgrade and sending a sacrificial overlord in to see what your opponent is up to. Scouting is critical. Scouting does not mean knowing where your opponents base is. It means regularly checking what he's building and training so you'll have the correct forces to counter him.

2: You can get a good feel for when to expand. Expanding does not only mean when you build your extra hatcheries (of which you could easily have built 3 or 4 in this game), but also when to produce tons of drones.

3: You can upgrade your units. +1 damage may not sound like much. But when the +1 damage is spread over 30 zerglings with a fast attack, it adds up quickly.

4: Mass your forces. Sending n your army piecemeal is bad idea

5: Continue teching. After you built your roach warren and hive, you didn't really tech save for building a handful of mutalisks. Yes, your unupgraded tier 1 and tier 1.5 units lost to a massed tier 3 unit. Consider if you'd gotten ultralisks, broodlords or massed hydras, that battle would've taken a completely different turn.

6: Creep, spread it. You built an early tumor. This is good. you never used it to spawn more. This is very, very bad. Consider this: Creep gives all of your units increased speed. Since the terran units will (nearly) always outrange you, the extra speed means you'll be able to close quickly and sdtart laying on the hurt. When you spot a ton of thors, creep also means you can GTFO. You also have vision of stuff that's standing on your creep, so it's a fantastic early warning system if you can get the creep spread up to the enemys base.

That's all I can think of for replay #2. I'll go watch #3 now.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I'm watching the replays as well, Ulminati is pretty much dead on. I wouldn't worry about the exact build order he points out too much though, just make units you like and get a feel for what works.

A few other notes:

KC expands early, but for 90% of the game has less drones mining then SMA has SCVs. While having them spread out amongst a second base helps his efficiency, he was still effectively 1 basing the entire game income-wise, yet needing to defend 2 bases.

Get that gas early. This really can not be overstated. You absolutely need more high tech units and more upgrades to fight off terran, mass speedlings alone wont do.

Notice that SMA did a really good job of putting marauders in front of the marines for that final push. That is why your banelings did jack shit to his group. I think they killed exactly 0 units, only bringing 5 marauders to near death who were fairly quickly healed. Had you came in from the side or behind, the situation would have been all the marines dead and 5 marauders getting raped by zerglings.

SMA: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY DID YOU NOT LIFT OFF THE COMMAND CENTER WHEN IT WAS ATTACKED? Yes, you won the game anyway, but this really baffled me.

If you are going MMM, start getting those upgrades from the engineering bay. Their effectiveness is especially huge for MMM groups, and they are dirt cheap at the beginning.

You are lucky KC wasn't getting his gas early and teching to muta. He would have destroyed you with a muta harass. Every once in a while, use those scans to check what the zerg is teching to, and use those excess minerals to throw a few turrets up. Those fucking turrets are ridiculously cheap for what they do to air units.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Replay 2:

SMA: I dunno what you were thinking pulling every SCV off mining to chase that drone. Never do that. I'm assuming it was just a misclick, but never let that happen.

Got an armory and didn't use it. Get mech armor, -1 damage per attack is heaven for a Thor whose worst enemy is Zerglings. The first upgrade is effectively a 100 health boost against pure zerglings, and the later ones only get more potent.

Bring SCVs to repair the Thor. You can set them to auto repair if you like. Its almost cheating, because enemies wont autotarget the SCVs and they actually block Zerglings from getting close. Hopefully Blizzard fixes that sometime, until then go ahead and abuse it.

Again, turrets. This time KC DID go muta, and you are lucky you had Thors. 2 Turrets, costing only 200 minerals total, could have saved your entire mineral line of SCVs.

KC: Really low saturation early on, and this hampers you throughout the game. Make 2 zerglings early on to take the towers and watch when SMA pushes out, and get zergling speed and/or baneling nest and/or roach warren. On a map this large, you can easily get away with making no other offensive units early on unless you see SMA pushing out of her base with something. Those extra drones early on add up to a lot in the late game. Once again, most of the game you had less drones then SMA had SCVs, even though you had the expansion. You also never used the 2nd gas in your main

You definitely should have scouted the mass thors. Get extreme amounts of speedlings in the center to prepare, and be extra careful to not have your mutalisks lolraped by them. Your bad early economy held you back from massing the zerglings like you should have.

No zergling speed. This is like, the most important upgrade you can get in the game. Every Zerg build is going to use zerglings, and you really needed them against those Thors.

The reason you died was from attacking an enemy of unknown strength in a relatively poor position instead of simply sitting back and waiting. The Thors tore you apart while you were fighting the marines. You needed to catch them in the open, get the surround with lots of roaches and zerglings at the same time. Of course, it would help knowing that SMA had Thors in the first place.



You both seem to scout in the beginning, then never really scout much again. KC pokes at the front door a few times, but it doesn't show him much. It seems you are scouting at the beginning out of pure habit because thats what you see everyone do and you assume its the right move, but that doesn't help you unless you are putting that knowledge to use. You need to get in there, look at the buildings, and figure out whats going on. If your enemy isn't preparing to rush, either make a large army and rush him, or make a lot of workers to get a better economy then check back later. Simply making a generic set of units and throwing them into the fog of war hoping they beat whatever is on the other side is not the way to play. An overlord or a scan is an acceptable sacrifice for knowing exactly what your opponent is up to.




Replay 3

SMA: When going reapers, its usually a good idea to apologize to your opponent for picking Terran as a race and being an asshole overall.

KC: ZERGLING SPEED ZERGLING SPEED. Also, keep the lings on creep and spread that creep quicker, especially between the bases. As soon as you saw the reapers, you should have pulled back and put your units at the edge of the cliff, ready to nail any reapers as soon as they jumped up.

You probably could have came back in the game had you abused that gold expansion which SMA would never have found because she never scouts anything

 

[Ulminati]

I notice The manatee beat me to the punch. His analysis is pretty much spot-on.

One thing I'll say for both of you however. At no point in the forst 20 minutes of the game should you not be producing workers. When you have around 25-30 workers in your base, it is time to push out with your army. While your guys are fighting, plop down a hatchery/command centre. Ideally, the fighting should wear your opponent down enough that he will not attack your expansion before it goes up.

AS SOON AS YOUR EXPANSION IS READY, transfer drones/scvs to it. If you're zerg, also have a queen already built and ready to go to the expansion. This way, you'll quickly jumpstart your economy, which will lead to an army size advantage, which leads to victory.

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Another thing that will help your game immensely is using hotkeys for your production buildings. Neither of you do this, and your minerals skyrocket while you're on the offensive or looking elsewhere. Skyrocketing minerals are army units you should be producing. For the terran, a hotkey for barracks, a hotkey for factories and a hotkey for command centres (for rapid mules and SCVs) is a bare minimum. The zerg has no excuse not to have a hatchery hotkey to quickly produce units.

Both of you set static rally points. Consider setting the rally point to a unit in your army when you push out. That way, units produced while you're fighting will automatically reinforce your fighting men.

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If you see a unit, and are unsure what to do against it, hit F12. It'll pop up a help screen. Click the tab in question (terran/zerg/protoss) and notice what the list of counters are. For mass thors, a ton of zerglings with the speed upgrade are dirt cheap. The thors shots do a lot of damage per shot, but have a low firing range and no splash vs. ground. Thus, a swarm of zerglings surrounding a thor will eat it before it can kill them all. You had 2500 minerals by the end. That's enough for a hatchery and 80 zerglings (well, 60 after you've spent some on overlords). If you'd built a hatchery more at your main and injected both with larvae, those 60 zerglings (with a speed upgrade) would've raped the thors.

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SC2 is very much a game of knowing what units to build and when to attack. For the terran, a single viking overflight (or scan, if he hasn't got a starport) will tell him everything he needs to know. This should be done at least every 5 minutes to make sure the zerg aren't, say, going mass baneling without you noticing. Zerg should get the speed upgrade for their overlords, and consider 100 minerals cheap for what a suicide overlord flying over the terran base will tell him.

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And KC. Infestors. Seriously. Try 1 or 2 of them. You'll need the infestation pit to upgrade to hive anyway. Fungal growth really messes up terran infantry something fierce. If you're playing against a noob like SMA (who doesn't scan and doesn't build turrets or ravens) try burrowing a couple of infestors, tunneling them into his base and then spawning a shitload of infested terrans in his mineral line.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

If you see a unit, and are unsure what to do against it, hit F12. It'll pop up a help screen. Click the tab in question (terran/zerg/protoss) and notice what the list of counters are.

Let me point out that in a few cases, this information is horribly wrong. As mentioned earlier, even though Vikings are anti-armored they still rape mutalisks and do it while costing less gas. Banelings are only moderately effective against zealots (though good in a pinch). Void rays beat muta for an equal cost force, and this is doubly true if they precharge up and split apart a bit to avoid the bounce damage. Hellions manhandle Stalker groups in large numbers, and do it while costing exactly 0 gas. They can also kite Roaches forever and take zero damage while wearing them down.

Notice the theme of Terran units being awesome even when they shouldn't be, and Zerg units being bad even when they should be good

 

[Zed]

ITT pros telling it.

 

[Ulminati]

Notice the theme of Terran units being awesome even when they shouldn't be, and Zerg units being bad even when they should be good

Part of the problem was probably the beta roaches. Zerg pretty much roflstomped everyone back then. Roaches were only 1 supply and had (I seem to recall) 25 more hp. They got hit with the nerf bat, hard. This is only transitory, I think. At the moment, Zerg vs protoss is pretty balanced. ZvT and PvT both go in the terrans favour. and since everyone, including the top Terran, Protoss and Zerg players seem to think this, terrans are probably getting a bunch of nerfs next patch. ATM, I'm sitting with 21 wins, 18 losses in diamond league as protoss. And I think 15 of those losses vere vs. terran. I feverntly hope they'll do to marauders what they did to roaches and up them to cost 2 supply while taking away some HP. I had the exact same problem in beta vs. roaches as I have vs. marauders now, and preventing the terran from massing them as hard will make me a happy camper. Another change that NEEDS to be made is either upgrading zerg queens massively vs. ground, or making it harder for terran to get early reapers. At the moment, zerg and protoss cannot fast expand because of the threat of reaper-rushes in diamont league. It's absurd that terran can force us to go a specific build without ever having to build a single reaper, simplyu because of the threat that he MIGHT put a tech lab on his rax.

But again. Blizzard were VERY responsive during the beta with balance tweaks. I fully support their nothin of waiting a few weeks after the release befor echanging anything, simply to see what people develop counters for before changing anything. And I fully expect a lot of terribad terran-tards to cry me a river when the nerfs hit.

Also, EMP shot is broken imba vs. Protoss. The other day, I was a split second too late with a feedback from my high templar, and the single, stealthed ghost in my opponents marine/marauder ball did a total of 800 shield damage to my army with a single EMP shot. If Terran is allowed to 1-shot my army, I want my closed beta Psi Storms back to compensate.

 

[Zed]

Reapers should requite engineering bay or something as well as the tech lab.

Or just nerf their damage a little.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I would still say that PvZ is a little bit imbalanced. Void rays are just silly when you realize Zerg has no T1 Anti Air, their T2 Anti Air are still cost inefficient against Void Rays, and they also have to defend against really strong 4 warp gate pushes which are hard to distinguish from void rays (both involve fast gas, fast cyber core with warp gate research, and 4 gate only warps the gates in right before the attack). Maps which allow the void rays to charge up on rocks right outside your base are absolutely brutal (scrap station in particular since you won't see the void rays till they are at your base, and its also easy to hide proxy pylons).

Not nearly as big as TvAnything imbalance though, its quite possible people will find new strats to help even the odds.

Also, EMP shot is broken imba vs. Protoss.

I was playing a Protoss friend whom I asked to go 4 Gate while I just made 3 factories with reactors and spammed Hellions to see how imbalanced they are in mass. I didn't even do it well and I won easily, and didn't spend a single gas on units. Then I wondered aloud what I should spend that Gas on. Next game had 3 ghosts, and he was so pissed about mass hellions raping protoss ground that he went void rays and had like 5 at my base. Which was promptly shut down by about 10 marines and 1 EMP. You could see throughout the entire game I had no idea of how to play terran. I was intending to go for battlecruisers, but I accidently built 3x reactors on my starports because I hit the wrong hotkey. And I did that twice. And I still won. I was playing a relatively decent diamond player.

Fucking Terran imbalance.

Roaches were only 1 supply and had (I seem to recall) 25 more hp.

Actually, Roaches used to regen something like 5 HP/s above ground inherently and 10 HP/s below ground. You had an upgrade for +20 HP/s regeneration rate bonus below ground. Roaches also had 2 armor instead of 1, meaning zerglings and marines did 20-25% less damage to them. To top it off, they moved faster burrowed.

Marauders, on the other hand, only got nerfed in that they have to spend 50/50 on an upgrade to get their concussive shells. Ohh, but stimpacks were buffed from 150/150 to 100/100, so it evens out anyway

 

[Ulminati]

Looking at replay #1 now. I'll be looking mostly at what KC does, since SMA basically sits in his base, jacking off until he has a bajillion marines. He should've made some timing pushes and found a good time to expand. There's NO EXCUSE WHATSOEVER for skipping marine shields when you're going mass marines. And you didn't even begin researching them until the 10th minute. Also, you should totally build an engineering bay and at the very least get +1 weapons and +1 shields for your MarineMarauderBall. Other than that, not much to say other than lrn2scout.

5 minutes in. Both players do some very solid openers here. I like how KC gets an evo champer, a baneling nest and quickly techs up to lair. SMA goes a very standard 3-rax build, which is perfectly viable. I would like to see that first tech lab getting either stims or combat shields asap when you're going for mass bio however. I'm a little sad not to see zergling speed, especially on a map where the lings have to sun so far. Remember KC: First 100 gas go towards zergling speed. The next 100 gas towards a lair.

Scouting zerglings should've gone all the way to the xel'naga tower and killed the SCV instead of camping outside the tower range.

At the 5-minute mark, Zerg has map control. Since the rush distance is very long, I would postphone further army training, pump out drones hardcore. Soon as lair finishes, build a second hatchery, pop a tumor and begin training a new queen. your natural and main can be easily defended with spine crawlers and a few units below your ramp, so long as your creep highway is up.

Overlord at terrans base is very good. I'd probably fly him a little to the SE, to see if there are any additions built on the completed barracks yet.

At 5:47, if zerg had morphed 6 banelings and waited for the 2 groups by the watch tower to arrive, he could've blown up a supply depot, rushed by with his zerglings (especially if they'd had speed) and utterly raped SMAs mineral line. This might've been enough to win the game right then and there. Zergling speed at 6:52. This is too late, but still for you getting it.

The timing of the zerg expansion is decent, but drone count is way too low. Ideal saturation is 24 drones on minerals (3 per patch) and 6 on gas. Since you only have 17 drones when you pop the expansion down, you'll not be able to saturate it in a timely manner. If you'd gone hardcore drone production (barring spotting SMA moving out, naturally), you'd be at 30-35 drones by now and your expansion would've kicked in immediately.

Banelings finally morphing at 8:10. If they had been with your initial zerglings, the terrans would only have had a third of the marines to defend against them. I fear the window for a good baneling bust may have passed. Notice that when you notice the queen had 150 energy, you immediately placed 2 tumors, and you're using them to spread more tumors. I like. So far, you're definately playing way better in replay #1 than in replay #2.

At 9:40, SMA pushes out. I like that you send a single zergling to scout his army. Nice. He has 25 marines and 5 marauders to your 15 banelings and 14 zerglings. you can probably kill his army here. What I'd LOVE to see is those banelings - with centrifugal hooks, sweet! - rolling up behind the smoke vents so they're hidden. Use your zerglings to lure SMA past the smoke and south, then attack with both groups as soon as he's sandwiched between them. That should DEVESTATE his army.

Instead, you leave your banelings behind, flee with your zerglings and engange with your banelings solo after he's had time to spot them. Imagine the chaos you could've wrecked if those blings had been hidden and his army was running after your zerglings. That battle would've killed all his fores and only cost you around 3/4ths of your blings and a speedling or two. The smoke vents presented you with an unique tactical oppertunity here. On other maps, you may be able to use grass or cliffs for a smiliar advantage. Surprise buttsecks from banelings is one of the great joys for a zerg player.

More back & forth at the 11 minute mark. You show SMA your second group of blings, keeping them out in the open, and he's smart enough to run away. Banelings rely on the element of surprise to wreck havoc. If you're not confident in your ability to time the banelings and zerglings to hit at the same time, you can use manual detonation. If you get burrow tech from your lair, you can burrow the banelings. Use your zerglings to engage, then flee, making the enemy chase you over the burrowed banelings. Select your baneling control group and mash the explode hotkey, giggling madly as your burrowed banelings become landmines. Another lovely trick is to burrow 4-5 banelings in the mineral line of an expansion and detonating them after your opponent has transferred workers.

Engagement at the 12-minute mark. Notice the banelings doing a nice amount of damage, even though he has medvacs out. If the 11 zerglings weren't jacking off under your overlords, you could probably have finished off his army then and there and raced to rape his expansion.

Around the 12-minute mark, you get an infestation pit. This is a good choice of building, since he seems committed to infantry and fungal growth + banelings rape infantry. Fungal needs to hit before you roll in the blings for maximum rapeage. You've also spotted that he has medivacs. This means he has a starport, and there MAY be banshees incoming. You NEED to get spore crawlers or morph overseers at this point to spot cloaked banshees. Also, because he may get vikings or banshees (to hunt overlords and drones respectively), you should get either mutas or hydras for antiair. In fact, due to the short travel distance for air, Scrapyard is an ideal map for early mutalisk harrasment.

Remember how I d at your evolution chamber earlier? It becomes a when you build it at 5 minutes but don't start building a single upgrade in it until the 9th minute. Upgrades take a long time to complete. Evolution chamber at 5 minutes was a very good timing, but as soon as it's done, it needs to be working on an upgade ALWAYS. Still, it's good you got it, your macro in game #1 is far superior to game #2. While I'm back at your base looking these timings up, I also notice you stopped spreading your creep tumors after the first jump. Keep building that creep highway. It'll help your units get around faster. Creep covering half the map is the hallmark of a good zerg player.

At 13 minutes, your earlier, well-placed overlord spots that SMA is going for the rocks. Your response is correct: Use the Xel'Naga tower to make sure it's not a feint, then pull your units back to defend. At this point You're running off of 2 bases, but neither is saturared. So your total income is the same as SMAs instead of double as it should be. SMA has a second base too, but has utterly neglected transferring workers to it.

When SMA takes the second rocks down, you move your banelings forward before burrowing them so he spots you. Pity. If he hadn't, he probably would't have turned back. So far, your macro has been quite good. At any given point in the game so far, you've been able to wipe out SMAs army with proper micro. Sadly, the baneling micro has been lacking. I like your infestors though, and I'd say you could definately make it to high gold/low platinum in europe with the current level you're displaying. At this point you've only made 1 mutalisk and aren't building more. This is a shame, as mutalisks need to be made in groups of 10-12 before they begin to become really effective. You could definately do with a big group of mutas or hydras at this point, but your army is still able to kill SMA if you hit his ground units with a fungal growth to immobilize and then send the banelings in.

15 minutes in. Baneling minefield. I need clean pants. Needed a fungal growth from those infestors, and should've popped the blings slightly sooner. But for gold/plat that was very good micro still. You proceeded to send in your infestors a mite too late and a group of zerglings afer. Hitting in waves is bad. better to go for all at once. Remember your infestors can move while burrowed, so burrow after getting off your fungal growth.

17 minute attack on expo is nice. not sure I agree with killing the command centre, considering how large an army was unaccounted for. At this point, the game has shifted into SMAs favour army-wise. You should probalby have expanded again around the 15-minute mark. The gold expo is a nice candidate, since non-diamond players very seldom check it. Failing that, your southwestern peninsula expansion could be held with just a pair of spine crawlers for defense.

19th minute complaint -- TONS of medvacs. You needed a couple of corruptors (pretty long range) sniping the medvacs while your ground army engaged it or better yet, 12-16 mutalisks focusing the medvacs (with bounces hitting the ball). At this point, he has too much healing, and you need to shoot the healers first.

All in all, I feel KC played MUCH better in replay #1 than in #2. If he had been slightly more aggressive earlier on and utilized slightly better baneling micro, he could've taken SMA's army out and proceded to rape the base. Right up until the 16-17 minute mark, KC was ahead in production, had lost less units and was all in all sitting pretty swell. SMAs main was getting mined out, and he had a lower income than KC. He was lucky to break though when he did. if SMA had waited much longer, KC COULD have beaten him through sheer numbers.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Just played some FFA games. Now obviously most of the people in there suck anyways, but holy fuck are ravens useful. Turrets to wipe out supply lines, and when combined with BCs, you fuck over everything in the game either with the missile (Bye marine spam) the defense drone (LOL turrets are useless kthxbye) or both (Vikings counter what now?). And they detect shit.

I can't imagine zerg or toss being any better off vs this shit. I guess carriers would make most of the raven shit useless, but their damage vs BCs is fuck all anyways.

 

[Ulminati]

I've actually noticed a lot of the top diamond terrans have begun to use ravens a lot. They were severely neglected up until about 2 weeks ago. Point defense drones stop pretty much any ranged army (stalkers, immortals, hydras, mutalisks, marine/marauder, siege tanks) dead in its tracks. Not sure if I'd consider them OP when you factor in how expensive they are, but they're definately a scary unit when used right.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I've actually noticed a lot of the top diamond terrans have begun to use ravens a lot. They were severely neglected up until about 2 weeks ago. Point defense drones stop pretty much any ranged army (stalkers, immortals, hydras, mutalisks, marine/marauder, siege tanks) dead in its tracks. Not sure if I'd consider them OP when you factor in how expensive they are, but they're definately a scary unit when used right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdD1mSYMoFQ

The Raven + PF push strategy mentioned in this game is hilarious. Next time I get in a 3v3 with good teammates I'll go for it.

I was actually playing a custom map called 'Impossible Scenario' which involves a bunch of micro challenges with limited units, and the finale is taking on huge zerg/protoss/terran armies with a limited amount of minerals and gas to buy forces. It would have been ridiculously hard (like 1k/800 total for 3 players to use), but we just spammed like 10 Ravens and 2 Battlecruisers. Rofl PDD > everything.

Overall, you want at least 1 for your detection needs anyway. PDD protects from like 250-400 damage on average, so I would say its definitely cost effective if you can keep them alive in the long run. If its a big battle and you throw down 3 PDD, you win and thats it. Unless your enemy pulls out really quickly, thats it.

 

[Ulminati]

Love the commentators in that replay. :D

Commentator: "QXC, how did you choose to pick terran? Did you realize they were going to be the easies and pick them, or was it just blind luck?"
QXC: "Uhm... I actually can see into the future, and I could tell that terran was just going to be continually buffed, because noobs didn't know how to play terran during the beta. And from that point on, I held on for the long-term game."
Commentator 2: "If you could see the future, you wouldn't have SCV-rushed, so really..."
Commentator 1: "Don't give him any credit! It's like picking a basket. Like, one holds an apple, the other holds and orange and the third one's filled with GOLD."
QXC: "Yeah, and I looked intot he future and picked the one with gold!"

Truly, terran are the facerollers of SC2. If a retri paladin decided to play SC2 instead of WoW, he'd pick terran.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

The whole thing is filled with awesome terran-bashing quotes.

Lets have you go hellions... no thats what people do.
Lets have you go marines... no thats what people do.
Lets have you go marauders... no thats what people do.
Lets have you go banshees... no thats what people do.
Lets have you go thors... no thats what people do.
Lets have you go reapers... no thats what people do.
AHH! Ghosts! Ghosts are a unit that are weak enough to actually humiliate a player!

 

[kingcomrade]

What are you talking about Ghosts are good units and EMP is killer against Protoss while Snipe is a decent option to deal with mutalisks.