I have returned: StarCraft II

[MisterBob]

You need to Collosus range upgrade, and you need to micro them in and out to avoid focus fire.

[vrumpt]

so about how frequently do they send out new waves of invites for the beta opt-ins?

[Kaylia]

As a noob player I find my biggest issues are usually Terran players who rush Marines/Marauders with Stimpacks. Whenever I'm playing as Protoss I find myself always losing slightly and I know Colossi are supposed to destroy those armies quite easily but they seem to drop pretty fast regardless. If I play Zerg it's not usually a problem since Roaches/Hydras are quite strong and can hold their own against a Marine/Marauder assault.

Feedback the medivac with templar (you can one shot it for 50 energy), and uses collosus on the marine. Build a few zealots and immortal as a front line, and the collosus behind should melt everything. It's a lot of microing, but I'm sure it's doable


You can send an observer asap to scout, and decide if you should intercept the medivac with templar (blow them before they land) or get collosus asap.

[edit]
Templar can also feedback banshee, if you don't forget about it like I did last night against shuvo.

[Rivero]

Feedback the medivac with templar (you can one shot it for 50 energy), and uses collosus on the marine. Build a few zealots and immortal as a front line, and the collosus behind should melt everything. It's a lot of microing, but I'm sure it's doable


You can send an observer asap to scout, and decide if you should intercept the medivac with templar (blow them before they land) or get collosus asap.

[edit]
Templar can also feedback banshee, if you don't forget about it like I did last night against shuvo.

My matches never seem to last long enough to grab Templars but thanks for the tip anyways. :D

[Kaylia]

Barrack -> factory -> starport
Gateway -> Cybernetic core -> citadel of adun (can't remember the name) -> templar archive

It's one more building, but if he is massing marine, marauder and medivac, he will need more than a single barrack, spend some time to build his army, and actually travel accross the map. If you have 2 more minute and you have psionic storm ready in case he actually land his marine (or try to get in through front door). It's just a matter of figuring out when the attack is going to hit, which I have to admit, isn't easy, but you should be able to counter it.

You can also take the dark templar route that is pretty deadly against terran since they rarely have more than 1 scan worth of energy).

[Maguspk]

I tried to play some 1v1s without using roaches. It sucks. I hate that roaches are like necessary for a zerg to build. If I build too many I'm screwed vs air, if I build too few I get stomped because lings fucking blow. Don't get me started on ZvZ...'lol whoever doesn't get more roaches loses lolol'

[GRT]

i think imma start 1v1ing with zerg, early worker harass is too damn effective to ignore against lower leagues, might propel me up a league for more challenge :3

[Kaylia]

I tried to play some 1v1s without using roaches. It sucks. I hate that roaches are like necessary for a zerg to build. If I build too many I'm screwed vs air, if I build too few I get stomped because lings fucking blow. Don't get me started on ZvZ...'lol whoever doesn't get more roaches loses lolol'

I never make a roach army, but that's probably why I lose.


The only other way I found around this is to use crawler early at a choke points and get mutalisk asap. If the other guys answer with hydra, I build baneling to counter them (baneling murder hydra)

[GRT]

hmm, not if they put the leftover roaches in the front tho, unless you can flank them or set a burrow trap

[SilverBreeze]

Am currently Rank 19 in 2v2 Platinum with a friend of mine on EU servers, pretty happy with that.

[Kaylia]

hmm, not if they put the leftover roaches in the front tho, unless you can flank them or set a burrow trap

Yeah, I wrote another paragraph about that after, but deleted it before posting. I wish baneling were slightly stronger against armored units. A single armored units take way too many baneling to kill.



One thing I would like to try is corruptor's ensnare ability. If it's anything like queen's in the original, it might be potent enough to turn the figth around (hydra vs a few muta or something)

[Maguspk]

I think the corrupter sludge only shuts down structures.

[GRT]

think he meant infestors

[geno]

I tried to play some 1v1s without using roaches. It sucks. I hate that roaches are like necessary for a zerg to build. If I build too many I'm screwed vs air, if I build too few I get stomped because lings fucking blow. Don't get me started on ZvZ...'lol whoever doesn't get more roaches loses lolol'

I know that at least in PvZ, lings > everything. Make sure to get speed and upgrade +1 armor fairly early as zerg so your lings don't melt to zealots. Then just always keep them moving on the map, use them to shut down unguarded expansion attempts, run by into a main and pick off probes, and just generally be annoying. If they try to move out, use them to harass his main and force him to pull back, if he doesn't, clear some probes before running them back because speedlings are ridiculously fast. Always flank and surround units, trying to hit from behind to get sentries/stalkers/immortals first.

A transition to mutas only amplifies how annoying they are. I know my brother only ever goes roaches in very small numbers to force a robo+immortal (which will be useless against muta tech), or to counter a 2-gate heavy zealot strategy (which is very uncommon these days). He almost always goes 2-hatch 2 queen mutaling and can get away with it pretty easily against protosses that try to tech too fast without putting on any pressure.

[Maguspk]

I know that at least in PvZ, lings > everything. Make sure to get speed and upgrade +1 armor fairly early as zerg so your lings don't melt to zealots. Then just always keep them moving on the map, use them to shut down unguarded expansion attempts, run by into a main and pick off probes, and just generally be annoying. If they try to move out, use them to harass his main and force him to pull back, if he doesn't, clear some probes before running them back because speedlings are ridiculously fast. Always flank and surround units, trying to hit from behind to get sentries/stalkers/immortals first.

A transition to mutas only amplifies how annoying they are. I know my brother only ever goes roaches in very small numbers to force a robo+immortal (which will be useless against muta tech), or to counter a 2-gate heavy zealot strategy (which is very uncommon these days). He almost always goes 2-hatch 2 queen mutaling and can get away with it pretty easily against protosses that try to tech too fast without putting on any pressure.

2-gate (and more even) is very common in games I play. Could I seriously go lings against mass stalkers/zealots? I feel like roaches are the only safe way to deal with mass zealots/stalkers. Also, I always do 1 Queen and just walk it back and forth between expo and main, is there a reason he goes with two?

[GRT]

same question here, single queen doesn't seem to have enough energy to fully support two close range hatcheries

[geno]

2-gate (and more even) is very common in games I play. Could I seriously go lings against mass stalkers/zealots? I feel like roaches are the only safe way to deal with mass zealots/stalkers. Also, I always do 1 Queen and just walk it back and forth between expo and main, is there a reason he goes with two?

Absolutely pure lings can take on zealot/stalker armies, so long as you aren't fighting from a bad position. Zerglings decimate stalkers, so you pretty much always want to engage from the back of their army if you can. Keep your lings out on the map, and run away if he tries to engage. If he tries to push in on your natural really early, any stalkers will be in the back as the units arc up to start attacking, which is where your lings should be coming from, and they will melt stalkers before the zealots can even get back.

Against the zealots, the important things to consider are positioning and upgrades. Zerglings can very easily beat zealots when they can surround them. If they have +1 weapons though, you pretty much need to have +1 armor to take them on (zeals kill lings in 2hits instead of 3 if they have an upgrade advantage). So long as you keep those things in mind, pure lings can take on most any early game push.

It gets a little trickier if they have a number of sentries and throw down some decent force fields, but in my experience, by the time they can afford that and a decently sized army capable of dealing with 20-30+ lings, you can have a spire pretty much done and mutas on the way. At that point, just use the mutas to clear their probe lines; if they run back to defend, run mutas away. If they push into your base, distract with lings and bring your mutas back after they've cleared most of the protoss economy. Keep in mind you want to engage/threaten constantly when they are pushing out, to try to lure them to waste sentry energy on useless force fields and pick off loner units and reinforcements, so the actual confrontation will be more in your favor. If their army just looks too big and too close to your base, counter with your lings instead, you can usually take out a ton of probes and force an elimination match that Zerg usually has an advantage in.

Here's a video a friend made of one of the first ladder games he played (he just got a key recently). Its not completely applicable because the protoss does go for a 1-gate tech strategy and my friend just does 1-base play, but it does show how a decently sized army can be decimated by pure lings. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cA5Q7qnAlM

As for the # of queens thing, yes 1 queen is actually very good if you are doing that, and is certainly the way to go early game in a lot of situations, but as you approach the midgame, you really need multiple queens and you have to keep up larvae production 100% of the time. I mentioned getting a 2nd queen a bit early because its a really effective way to enhance a greedy opening against a turtling/teching protoss, spamming drones and saturating your bases and then transitioning into full larvae use on units. You have to watch out for what he's doing though, quick void rays or phoenixs can come out faster than you'd think, so scouting is really important if you are playing this way.

[geno]

I forgot to mention, if they are really pumping out zealots early on out of 2, or more likely 3/4 gates, you should go roaches, you aren't going to handle that with zerglings alone. But on the other hand, it really puts the protoss in a bad position if they don't do enough damage with it. Still use your early lings to slow down/stop reinforcements and force them to defend their probe line, while teching to roaches and getting a lot of them (particularly if you see 3-gate and chrono boosts going on). In my experience, roaches are just too hard a counter to zealots at a certain point, and they will just walk over the protoss before he can get robo tech out to deal with them.

You really have to watch to see if they are committing to it though. 2-gate alone with no chrono boosts, particularly if you dont see constant zeal production, can probably be dealt with without going mass roach. At that point, its really not that much different from a 1-gate tech strategy.

[Maguspk]

I just did all lings and then to Mutas asap, just pumped out lings and nothing else until spire was done and by then I had lots of excess minerals for more lings while gas was trickling in for mutas. It worked well but I think both my opponents were bad because I beat them by myself my partner didn't do anything.

They never rushed me either so when I had a sizeable Muta force I threw most of my lings at one of their bases and essentially wiped out the entire army and their up and coming expo.They went immortals and void rays for some reason and my lings tore the immortals up. I did notice some odd behavior on the lings though, they were getting walled on normal ground way past the ramp by a pylon and like 2-4 zealots, I couldn't surround them but they definitely looked like they could be surrounded. It was about 50+ lings in the space of what normally 10 would take up and it looked like a blob of purple just kind of pushing on the zealots. No idea what that was about. But yeah, definitely going to give this a shot for a bit and see how it goes in a few more matches.

Quick question though, what is the Protoss player goes Colossi during this time? I won't pretend to know how quickly colossi can be built but sometimes it seems like they have them really early, those would tear up any roach/ling army eh? If I scout robotics places should I go heavy on mutas or what?

Thanks for the replay, watching it now.

[geno]

Oh in 2v2s, I really couldn't tell you as much, timings and attack sizes are completely different there and from my experience, roaches are pretty important a lot of the time just for defense or to end the game early with a double-attack. My 2v2 partner usually goes roaches.

As for in 1v1s. Yeah you'll have a lot of extra minerals if you do it 1-base (you see that in the video too). You should probably use those minerals to expand though instead of just pure ling. The threat is the same from 35 lings as from 50, and that's half the point of early ling aggression. With the extra base, you can also use extra minerals on drones instead of lings without as much worry that you are wasting larvae.

For dealing with unit walls by the way, spam right click with your lings beyond the wall. If you have a lot of lings and have speed upgraded, a lot of them will trickle through, at which point you can attack and you'll have surround the zealots. Its a glitch right now that really shouldn't be possible, but it does fuck with a lot of 1-gate tech strategies.