[Statix]

Dont get me wrong, the opponent clearly won the game and i should of gg'ed but i didnt as i just regard it as retarded play which is just annoying more than anything. Let me explain. Ive hit ladder quite hard this last couple of days and im losing to play (only just tho) which im wondering about the defense of

Ill explain. Last game, Lost Temple against T

I send in overlord close air and see gas straight away so i thought banshees. I hung it around there and sure enough i saw 2 starports go down both with tech labs. sure enough the banshees came around 5-7 of them

Meanwhile back at home i build 3 queens per base just to see if this worked and built spores in my min lines and fast teched to lair for mutas which i eventually got out.

I Suppose i lost the game down to bad micro or positioning on my part but why were the spores OF NO USE what so ever. They are out of range of these things, queens got sniped and then the banshees scaled around the outside taking out all my buildings and stray units, the mutas chased them off.

Now my big mistake was going over the his base and attacking and getting mutas lost with their REALLY GOOD AIR DEFENSE, i had 8 mutas but got whittled to 3 quickly without doing nearly a 10th of damage he was able to do. My air is useless.

so when we tussled and he retreated i sent my 60 lings in on a stupid 3 deep wall of supps and rax got the nest but at this point id had my nat taken out and rebuilt, i then baned the wall got in and destroyed min line took out loads of stuff but he had vikings killed my last remaining air, sniped ovies . . damn.

I cant believe i saw it coming, built 6 queens, 6 spores and 8 mutas and this didnt do enough damage. im not complaining about imbalance or anything but i just couldn't take the shees out... and when he got cloack, man i was mad, he sniped by lair already. i put it donw to bad engage ment on my part but the question is this

You must have come across this. what should be my train of thought?
Whats a solution to this kind of play?

My reflection is i should have massed mutas when i had the econ over the bases and kept him out . . but the counter seemed to tempting as he didnt have enough ground force, just enough to whittle the mutas with missiles and vikings to reduce me to a none offensive force.

[x5_Potter]

Shoulda kept the mutas at home, all detection things have awesome range of detection and so you would have been able to see. If you had 3 spores a base and couldn't see the banshees for long enough to kill them, then I think the spores may have been poorly placed.
With 8 mutas it'd be maybe 2-3 volleys from them to take out a banshee(not really sure, wild guess). With a build like 2port banshee the terran can't really do much else, so just focusing on defending rather than trying to harass with mutas and bane bust is the better option.

[Cute]

Upload a replay bro! We can be a lot more helpful if we can see exactly what happened

Quick Comments

PiG:

we can't help without a rep >.<

[Cordance]

Without a replay its hard to advise you very well. Go back over things check your macro. Unspent Lava are hidden macro fails also missed injects. Spores are useful but if he is going 5-7 banshies you need to be looking at some high dps units if your looking for defense. You really didnt pick the best defense for their attack. Dont forget Mutas are not straight fighting units unless you have over whelming numbers try to avoid engaging with them. Picking off small things like refineries will change the game and frustrate them just as much as banshies frustrate you.

[PiG]

You should always go hydras vs 2port not muta . The spores are just for detection and to stall small numbers of banshees. Past 3-4 air units always pwn static defense because they can stack on top of each other and take out 1 at a time by angling. Just think of how mutas pwn lone turrets once you get enough.

[Statix]

yeah man, im too lazy to attach replay . . but I WILL!

[foxmeep]

I know I'm not as good as PiG, but I certainly prefer mutas over hydras because once you deflect banshees with hydras you have a unit that is utterly useless vs Terran.

Just make sure you keep overlords spread around your base then you can move your queens together to intercept the banshees until your mutas arrive. Queens also have more range than banshees so always try to bait banshees back into the range of spores.

If the Terran went 2 port, then he can't do any sort of useful push, so just use your mutas for map control and get an eco lead.

The fact is that unlike Terran/Protoss, Zerg generally doesn't get to go straight for a killing blow once they've gained an advantage.

[Statix]

yeah my analysis exactly, i never really consider the queen, but my micro in these situations certainly needs to improve. i prefer the hydra solution as its quicker and cheaper i think but like you say unless im mad teching up hydras are difficult to keep alive

[breadfan]

I can't watch the replay while at work, but here's some thoughts as a

2 port banshee is a huge drain on his economy! If he is pumping banshees two at a time, that means he can probably be producing a hellion or 2 marines at a time on one base. If you went roach hydra, you would have a pretty solid counter pressure after you take down some banshees. Especially with cloak in play, he won't have any kind of scary gas units like tanks/thors or even Marauders to deal with your roaches.

Remember for the followup - the terran now has 2 starports to make use of, so even with mutas out, air is probably going to feature in whatever he follows up with, whether it be heavy medivac (whether he drops or not) or if he goes for some kind of mech raven play. If he doesn't make use of them, that's an opening for you to catch up!

He's set himself up to be in a strong position vs Broodlords in the late game with some big scope for Viking production, so that might be a factor in future tech choices (but the game still has a long way to play out I guess)

[ETL.Branno]

i think you should have pulled all your queens to your main before engaging so you are fighting with 6 queens with transfuse. i think because he attacked so late this game it was ok to go mutas but you needed more gas for them so get 4 gas earlier and also you didn't need to get ground upgrades so early if you know he is going banshee. you pretty much just want to defend from there but also poke in to see if you can harass at all (if there are marines or turrets just back off until you get a higher count of mutas). from there if he doesn't leave its gona be just like a normal game except you should have a massive lead especially if you can deny his natural.

[Daboo]

I watched the game last night, so here what I remember seeing(keep in mind I'm not a zerg though).

If I remember correctly, your evo chamber actually completed before your spawning pool.....why so defensive? And you had two spores out on the mineral patches well in advance. One thing that is useful to know is timings. You only have to worry about banshees around the 7:30 mark, so you need to space out your defenses accordingly based on that time, and not blindly counter something.


What really was the problem was that the build was not tight enough, you responded with mutas, but you only had two mutas at 12 minutes (I think the normal time is 10 minutes for mutas), which not really ideal. I think this was because your hive was delayed .

So ultimately,
1)Dont prematurely setup defences, until you have evidence that something is coming.
2)Learn a standard build, that will allow you react to whatever, try to setup times after watching replays of pros, for example...at x time, I will have so many mutas. You'll find that most of these cheesy badly executed builds will be totally destroyed by playing normally and crisply.

[Statix]

k, im having issues of late with WHEN to throw structures down if my scouting is incomplete

[nGenLight]

Losing to stupid shit over and over and over and 54905405347 different ways is what makes players good, especially zerg players. Your mechanics is not at the point where you should focus on strategy too much.

Quick Comments

mGGDaedalus:

[Trusty]

Originally Posted by xGKingLight

Losing to stupid shit over and over and over and 54905405347 different ways

That pretty much sums up my ladder on all 3 servers....

[Statix]

yeah there is a ton of stuff i need to work on for sure, ive been focussing on getting drones up to 50 at the 10 min mark, use my set BO which i payed for so to speak through coaching and then scouting then to counter atm, its working well i guess but then these quick timings really mess up my play and i cant seem to recover after it.

Harass makes this even worse

[PiG]

Originally Posted by foxmeep

I know I'm not as good as PiG, but I certainly prefer mutas over hydras because once you deflect banshees with hydras you have a unit that is utterly useless vs Terran.

Just make sure you keep overlords spread around your base then you can move your queens together to intercept the banshees until your mutas arrive. Queens also have more range than banshees so always try to bait banshees back into the range of spores.

If the Terran went 2 port, then he can't do any sort of useful push, so just use your mutas for map control and get an eco lead.

The fact is that unlike Terran/Protoss, Zerg generally doesn't get to go straight for a killing blow once they've gained an advantage.

Your points about the queens moving to defend and overlords spotting are spot on. However hydras are actually a good unit vs terran. In fact they are amazing mixed into almost any army. The issue is obviously they cost a tech structure and expensive upgrade and are only efficient as a very small part of your army. Not en masse.

Now why spend money on them if they are just a minor support unit? Any terran worth his salt will transition into mech off a 2port, often adding ravens also. This is because they have a buttload of gas and techlabs already up. If you want to see mutas be completely worthless have them fight Thors and PDDs.just about 10 hydras on the other hand are not weak to thor nor tanks (tank damage nerf... same number of shots as roaches to die) and chew through PDDs in no time. You still want roach bane as your standard army. Also why roaches? Even if he's retarded and doesnt. Go mech he'll have lots of helion out and you need to get to 4 base instantly once safe and you can't do that with ling bane.

Inh summary: hydras rule just remember don't make too many!

[FaDeBadger]

PiG's love affair with the Hydra is now out in the open!

[Statix]

Had a lesson off PiG yesterday, cant tell you how much that has helped already in my games but heres another issue im having

I drone up, 3 base, 4 base, got lings at ramp looking, Nothings happening. I see no gas, see a gate but then i get killed. Do another scout cant get in but i know he has, no more exp . . looks like hes on 2 base (toss btw) . .anyway . .we sit and tech, then my scouts get taken out and keep getting taken out do no more map control. then i wait and then finally, 20 mins later im fully teched and maxed, so is he we send everything in. My army dies to carriers,voids,collossi vs .... hmm well, hydras/roach and lings, then infestors hydras lings, then infestors lings, then infestors/Muta/hydra. i sent in about 3 comps of armies mutas were out really late so no upgrades.

Now the alanysis i gave myself would be i should of attacked when i lost map control cos he was (hopefully) starving

What should be my approach if i see no movement from him up to the 15 minute mark?

What should i have done

[cRtbk]

Hi,
I am fairly new at giving advice to people, but i will try my best. The problem that i can see is that after you lost map control you had zero vision of your opponent. I am assuming you had no vision because you had a unit composition of roach hydra ling against carriers voids collo. I suggest researching overlord speed and spreading ol to each mining place in the map, never let the toss get ahead of you in bases. As long as you had the protoss contain on 2 bases, try and hold that position while you take the map. Saccing ol / zerglings into the opponent base tells you info about your opp unit composition and you can adjust your unit comp to go against what your opp has.

To answer your question about "What should be my approach if i see no movement from him up to the 15 minute mark?"
Its fairly certain that the protoss is trying to make a deathball. In this case if you were up on bases against the protoss, you should be trying to poke into you opponent base and trade with your opponent, this allow him to keep his mineral bank down and makes it harder for your opponent to max out. Trade cost efficiently, and remember to change your unit comp eg in this case to mass corrupters lings against a colo void carriers. The lings are to take down bases where your opponent army is not and the corrupters is to deal with the heavy air. Keep expanding behind this because you should always push your lead.

Sorry if this doesn't help or you don't understand it statix, my English is terrible =[ , i was gm last season in sea top 50

[Statix]

np man any info is anew way of looking at it however im under strict instructions NOT to sac over lords, most info at these levels acan be got by d scout, which ive got to say . .that PiG was right, i used to do it when i started . . . but no idea what i was looking for, now i do it, its like i know their 3 couse menu... they better have an appetite cos my starter is 10 zerg. bon appetit