Zerg Really Easy to Kill?

[Viikuna]

Wall with Barracks and suply depot. Get few marines. If you wall the ramp properly he cant get up, and it only takes few marines to shoot those lings.

Im guessing that your opponen just has faster fingers than you do. I also won 4 of my 5 placement matches with zerling rush against noob protoss.

You can also have few scv´s repairing your wall if needed. Remember that if he makes lot of lings early, he has less drones, so you end up having more minerals.
Then you just gotta have few death squads of some mobile hit and run units to bust his badly defended early expansions.

I personally never even try to break ramp with the wall. Its just too hard. Banelings could work, but if they got long range shit, banelings just get pwnt too. Its much easier to do muta harras and use worms to get lings to your enemys base.


Actually, you play on Europe right? If you add me ( Viikuna ), we can play some TvZ someday and try to learn some new tricks.


edit. In usual army vs army battle Terran wins. It takes á lot of work to stop helion+thor+tank push, and its damn difficult. You gotta take economical victory. Try to keep enemy occupied, try to expand everywhere.

Terran counter is simply harras better, try to prevent expanding and then crush with that mech army. ( Which is bit easier to do, really. )

edit2. Dont know why that video didnt work, so I dont know how to fix it, so Im just being lazy and removed it.

 

[Oninuva]

Your video isn't working =[

 

[Siretu]

Diary of a Zergling (You may have to "continue", at the top, to get past the SC2 ad).


" it doesn't matter if I do a baneling-proof wall "

Sounds like you're doing something wrong (like, you're too slow in getting stuff up and running).
If my first 20 Zerglings (with or without Banelings) manage to take down as much as an entire supply-depot, I throw a party.
If, additionally, they also take down one SCV after that depot, I put up a Memorial Day celebration.

Siretu, have you tried early banshee cheese? You can factory/barracks at wall to block it from baneling bust, while pumping out marines and a bunker to defend. One bunker goes a long way, anytime they come attack, pull your SCVs off. If they are teching muta, then go early thor + early expand, if they go roach a banshee is a hard counter, hit them hard and follow up with some ground troops to clean up. Cloak is also a must with banshee. Theres a really easy number of ways to counter zerg, it's just make sure you hit them early and scan them. A zerg can't really hide their buildings like a toss or terran so you'll know what their teching.

Terran Mech against their ground forces are just really devastating and theres nothing a few vikings can't handle against brood lords.

With a baneling-proof wall, I mean a barrack and a factory. 4-6 banelings get down a supply depot and then the speedlings can run in and kill the marines. 10 banelings can take down a barrack(I think) and then run in with speedlings and kill my stuff and I will have lost a production building as well.

I often succeed in deterring the baneling bust, but while I've been turtling in my base, he's expanded and got a lot of mutas. I wouldn't have a Thor up at that time and he can do a lot of damage even if I scanned and put up an engineering bay in advance.

The mutas will then keep me in my base, possibly allowing me to expand once while I get my thors out. When I push out, he got his brood lords and I wont have enough vikings since mutas counter vikings in mass.

Thors aren't good enough especially when they get surrounded by broodlings to prevent them from getting in range of the brood lords.

Still, it's generally considered harder to play zerg since to compete with an equally skilled player, you have to do more stuff.

Also, I don't like to cheese. It'll work a bit in the beginning but the zerg will get overseers/spore crawlers and it becomes much harder.

 

[celerisk]

" 10 banelings can take down a barrack "

1000 / 80 = 12.5
So, 13 would be the minimum... and even just that is already 13 * 25 = 325 gas.
It takes forever to get that much gas that early in the game.

I'd suggest you give the 1:1:1 build a try (1 Barracks -> 1 Factory -> 1 Starport).
Then get Siege tech (and the tank that goes with it).


" he got his brood lords "

Well, while I agree that those are the greatest since sliced bread, they are nonetheless tier 3... very end-game.
They take very long to get and are extremely expensive if you want more than 2 or 3 (and, oh yes, do you want more than 2-3).

If that's the time you "push out", that would be some 25+ minutes into the game.
What were you doing until then?
At 25 minutes, I have 5 bases running, killed at least 2 expansions, and got some 4-500 units spawned (I play Zerg exclusively).
(Optionally, my opponent has 5 bases and killed two of mine and is about to win )


Tried some replays yet? (Easy, youtube's full of 'em)
And, what's your usual build order? And the time it takes to do it?

 

[Viikuna]

My games usually go like this:


1. Build overlord at 9 suply, spam drones, scout with one drone.

2. Pool or expanding comes when your spy drone provides the information about enemys tech situation.

3. Pool or expanding, depending on what I did in 2.


4. Create few queens and spine crawlers for defence, zerlings for harrasing. The ration depends on what enemy has. Usually in this point I just focus on surviving his first attack.

5. Burrow one zerling on each resource spot he might expand. Burrow some zerlings near his base. If you can get in, try to kil as many workers as possible.

6. Try to use zerlings to keep him in his base. Expand like there is no tomorrow.

7. Make mutas, shitloads of mutas and start harrasing enemy workers and troops. Spawn loads of lings and either use them for harrasing, or just map controlling.

8. Try to get lings inside enemy base with a worm, or alternatively try to use your mutas so that you can get lings to do some killing. ( Lure enemies somewhere where they can be nicely surrounded. )


Also upgrade you troops as much as possible, after you have your economy up. Upgrades really do wonders for your zerlings and mutas.

 

[Oninuva]

If your pushing when he has a lot of brood lords / mutas, it's been a bit too long. You should be pushing out with your first thor, grabbing your first expo. Usually I have two thors and I'm already pushing his base, of course pre-scouting, theres no way he can have more than 5-6 mutas at that point. But yeah, make sure you scout, and attack early.

 

[Cornface]

I prefer early roaches, it seems to work against 90% of the less experienced players. They are extremely tough, and hard-hitting. I like aggressive gameplay and massive mapcontrol, I try to contaminate the enemy to 1-2 expands, while I expand like crazy.

The problem is that I won so many games this way, I start facing much, much more experienced players than me. (I am in Silver League, and I always face people from gold, or if I am unlucky, platinum league) and I always get outmacro'd and/or outmicro'd by these players. I just stand a chance.

Also, I love placing Overseers and putting Changelings inside their base to scout, few people are prepared of it and on some maps it is really easy.

 

[Bloodcount]

Can a fellow zerg player please assist me with some navigation ?

I am not compleatly sure when I should get gas, also any tips on how to have better queen control (the larva summoning spell) are more then wellcomed and how many muthas is enough for an attack ?

 

[Siretu]

When you get gas depends on your situation. E.g if you're going for an early baneling bust, you want an early gas to afford speed upgrade for your lings, bling nest as well as a couple of blings.

When it comes to queen control, there is a brilliant technique. With it, you can use inject larvae with 4+ queens in about a second.

Read about it here

The amount of mutas you need to attack depends a lot on what you want to do and what he got. If he got a couple of thors, you probably don't want to attack them head on because of their splash.

If you just want to harass, 2-3 will work but when you go away after your first harass, he'll probably put up more static defense, making it harder for you to do damage the next time.

If you get a big group of mutas however, you can kill the missile turrets pretty easily without taking too many losses.

 

[Viikuna]

Most efficient way of using mutas is to haras their workers. I use zerlings for that too, before I get mutas.

Together with wild expanding it usually gives you a huge mineral advantage, which means you can have big number of hatcheries and queens for spawning huge amount of mutas and lings or any other units you want really fast.

What zerg needs is loads of gas, though. I usually end up having very little gas and too many minerals, even with 3 or more bases. Zerg uits cost too much gas, IMO.
You can always spam lings, at least. Just remember to upgrade them a lot.

 

[sqrage]

Btw it just might be NA people that suck at playing Zerg.

We see a lot of variation between the regions. Making a change for how NA players play may be completely ridiculous for how KR players play, and actually mess up a balance there. For instance 10 of their top 20 players are zerg. So that's one place where we have to be mindful and careful and attack balance issues with great prejudice.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/374942110?page=2

 

[Joccaren]

Watch some of PsyStarCraft's games on you-tube, especially if your not good at playing Zerg. His games should give you an idea of what does and doesn't work when vsing terran, protoss and other Zerg players, plus give you some new strategies to use.

 

[Exide]

I haven't played 1v1, 2v2, etc nearly enough to tell.
However, I played 2v2 the other day as Zerg vs Terran. I spammed a lot of Roaches, Zerglings and a few Hydralisks and attacked a bunch of Marines (not even a medic) - maybe the same amount as my forces, or slightly less - they killed all my units and survived with about half of their forces.

 

[Viikuna]

Thats because Zerg units have worse cost/strength ratio than terran and protoss units. You either need more minerals&gas or you need to micro better to win battles.

Thats why when playing zerg you try to avoid fighting enemy army and harras as much as possible their economy same time as you expand your own.

Hopefully they make some changes in next patch, though. It seems that zerg was too strong in beta, so they overnerfed it, which now sucks because Blizzard no longer has any " we realease it when its ready" -standards. ( bnet 2.0 is another good exaple of that )

 

[celerisk]

On a related note, that also seems to be a regional thing.
As an example, the top 20 "SEA" are mostly Protoss, with my new best friend at the top
Whereas the same list in Korea features mostly Zerg (9 in the top 20).

In other words, a "balance" change may have a much larger effect than anticipated or no effect at all.
Patching the beta on a weekly basis seems normal. That was the perfect time for testing everything, quickly.
Now though... well, we'll see.

Can always wish for faster Hydralisks
Or Brutalisks.
Or the Leviathan (as a counterpart to the YoMomma-Ship).


And, with patches like 1.0.3... oh well.

 

[Viikuna]

Using top players as an example is as terrible as using the worst players as an expample. ( Most of those are probably protoss I guess. I only met protoss in my placement matches anyways )

And many of your Korean pros also seem to be saying that winning with zerg requires way too much work, and that they have very little efficient strategies comared to Terrans and Protoss, which is why those guys are now switching to Terran.

edit. Zerg need something that can punish that big slow moving ball of strong firepower units. ( Tank, Helion, Thor -combo, which currently cant be countered with any of zerg units )

Some Dark Swarm remake might be good. It should just do something for AoE damage too, because othwerwise helions would still burn your lings. And damn, I do miss plague. I want some defilers NOW!


edit2. I mean, cmon. If the game gets in the same lategame situation like in this game, zerg just cant win, no matter how well you play if the enemy doesnt make mistakes.

 

[celerisk]

" Using top players as an example ... "

Well, who else you expect Blizzard to take?
A minor balance change has no visible effect unless the very best players are involved.
If a low-grade player like me already notices the change, imagine the effect that change has in Diamond...

 

[Siretu]

Using top players as an example is as terrible as using the worst players as an expample.

On the opposite, using top players as an example is probably the best thing to do. If people in bronze-platinum experience balance issues, it's mostly because they played worse(Which is why I don't call Zerg OP for owning me(Terran) in a lot of games)

The top players are however at a very equal skill level and therefore the deciding factor in the games might often come from balance issues.

I still think a zerg can compete with a terran. If it's on a low level, you just have to improve generally but on a higher level you need to be able to do a lot more than the terran to win.

 

[Xienoph]

On the opposite, using top players as an example is probably the best thing to do. If people in bronze-platinum experience balance issues, it's mostly because they played worse(Which is why I don't call Zerg OP for owning me(Terran) in a lot of games)

The top players are however at a very equal skill level and therefore the deciding factor in the games might often come from balance issues.

The problem is, how can you tell if someone is a "top player"? I am under the impression that Blizz is using the ladder to determine if a player is good. But the problem is, a lot of players in leagues rely on cheese and all-in tactics to climb the ladder. I heard that bling bust and 4 warpgate rush work all the way to platinum / diamond level. It's very difficult to balance based on that (although they can make cheese and all-ins riskier and harder to pull off by looking at those players)

 

[Oninuva]

Though it does some level of skill I guess to be able to pull them off...