[Satu]

Originally Posted by Ridiculisk

There's a decent ZvZ write up with vods and stuff on TeamLiquid I think???

Can't remember what it's called, something like [12 Days with the Pro's ZvZ with Ret] or something like that? It's got some good info if you can find it though.

Personally I hate ZvZ atm. It feels like such a coin toss match-up. I feel like I have to send one of my initial drones to scout for a 6 pool, which puts you on the back foot almost imediatly.

And then when a game doesnt end with something cheesy like a 6 - 8 pool, it's just a race to see who gets Mutalisk's first...

I just need to practice more I think. But it's very frustrating.

First off, its "12 weeks with the pros" and Mr.Bitter is running it. Actually, Mr.B's sessions with Ret, Incontrol and Machine that I've watched are all amazing. Only they are fairly lengthy and kill my downloads. The most useful thing I've watched from Mr. B is him coaching some guy on his stream who sounded aussie. They had a guy 4gating the aussie every game, to see if the aussie could stop it. Mr.B was talking about all the small details of the 4gate and then showed that he knew what he was talking about when he beat the 4gating guy, with perfect scouting as well. The cool part about that story is how the next day, I got 4gated but held it off perfectly, and ended up winning. But thats ZvP. His ZvZ vods are amazing too, probably the best resource for ZvZ right now.

I disagree about the mutalisks race. Why? Hydralisks. You can throw a few hydras into your army just incase they are going for mutas, without even scouting. Hydras own mutas, and CAN back up your army pretty well. Still, if you're sure they aren't muta rushing, its pure roaches. On top of that, if you see them muta rushing, and all you have is roaches, you just go kill them. They wont have enough to defend 99% of the time.

I also diagree about drone scouting early in ZvZ. In fact, I disagree with drone scouting on most maps at all. If its a 4player map, then sure. But if its a 2 player map, your overlords can scout everything anyway. And what are you going to do vs a 6pooler if you scout it? You get a pool a bit earlier, by one or two food. In majority of cases, your lings still wont pop in time, so you just have to know how to do drones vs lings, or how to stall with drones. The advantage of doing it this way is that you get extra mining time than your opponent (Assuming they drone scout) which makes you get a potential extra drone out, as you have the better economy to do so. That advantage can increase over the period of the game, especially if you get some attacks on their mineral lines.

As for sky, I havent watched that ZvZ ep yet, I've only really seen his ZvZ day[9] build eps. I'll be sure to watch it.

[TAhackdZ]

Originally Posted by Zergtastic

First off, its "12 weeks with the pros" and Mr.Bitter is running it. Actually, Mr.B's sessions with Ret, Incontrol and Machine that I've watched are all amazing. Only they are fairly lengthy and kill my downloads. The most useful thing I've watched from Mr. B is him coaching some guy on his stream who sounded aussie. They had a guy 4gating the aussie every game, to see if the aussie could stop it. Mr.B was talking about all the small details of the 4gate and then showed that he knew what he was talking about when he beat the 4gating guy, with perfect scouting as well. The cool part about that story is how the next day, I got 4gated but held it off perfectly, and ended up winning. But thats ZvP. His ZvZ vods are amazing too, probably the best resource for ZvZ right now.

I disagree about the mutalisks race. Why? Hydralisks. You can throw a few hydras into your army just incase they are going for mutas, without even scouting. Hydras own mutas, and CAN back up your army pretty well. Still, if you're sure they aren't muta rushing, its pure roaches. On top of that, if you see them muta rushing, and all you have is roaches, you just go kill them. They wont have enough to defend 99% of the time.

I also diagree about drone scouting early in ZvZ. In fact, I disagree with drone scouting on most maps at all. If its a 4player map, then sure. But if its a 2 player map, your overlords can scout everything anyway. And what are you going to do vs a 6pooler if you scout it? You get a pool a bit earlier, by one or two food. In majority of cases, your lings still wont pop in time, so you just have to know how to do drones vs lings, or how to stall with drones. The advantage of doing it this way is that you get extra mining time than your opponent (Assuming they drone scout) which makes you get a potential extra drone out, as you have the better economy to do so. That advantage can increase over the period of the game, especially if you get some attacks on their mineral lines.

As for sky, I havent watched that ZvZ ep yet, I've only really seen his ZvZ day[9] build eps. I'll be sure to watch it.

koolies, than for clarifying the title for me.

And secondly....LOL is all I can say to the Hydralisk's...Hydra's off creep have absolutly no chance against decent muta harass. Fact of the matter is they have map control once they get some muta's. Sure Hydra's will rape them in a stand up fight, but personally, when I see hydra's trying to counter my muta's I just attack somewhere else.... You'll still get to do some damage before the Hydra's get there, and if you can do enough, you can force more units, drone up and expand. Muta's are map control, and ZvZ is all about map control.

I'm not disagreeing with the Hydra's counter muta's thing, but if your opp has muta's and see's that you have Hydra's, if he's smart, he'll have your hydra's playing tag while he macro's up and rolls you.

Essentially What I'm getting at is that Zerg needs map control. We are a reactive race, that needs to know what our opponents are doing to counter it effectivly. We do this by attaining and maintainging map control. The best units for this are Speedlings and Muta's (Both cause they're very fast) If you give up the muta's and you opponent doesnt...well then you've pretty much given him the map. He's now safe to expand, since he can poke and harass if you try to move out of your base, kill of some workers that sorta thing. Or he can just fly around the map, sniping OL's and expo's while your Hydra/Roach army tries desperatly to catch up to him.

EDIT: Probably could have worded that better, no offence intended.

[Satu]

Originally Posted by Ridiculisk

And secondly....LOL is all I can say to the Hydralisk's...Hydra's off creep have absolutly no chance against decent muta harass.

This annoys me because I had the perfect replay to prove that statement wrong. It was against BakaInu after the BSG #5, where he wanted a rematch. It had him massing mutas and doing epic harrass, he killed off SOOOO much stuff while I massed hydras. I had my bases connected with creep and massed hydras for pretty much the entire game. Then I just moved over to his base and attacked. He had a few roaches sitting there to defend, with some lings. All died to my hydras. I would mention his mutas came over to help, but it was as if they just evaporated on arrival.

I also have a replay against a masters league player in a community open, where I go mutas, he goes roach hydra, and with minimal hydras, he defends. With only a main and a natural on metalpolis, he has hardly any distance he has to run to defend both main and natural. He moves over to my base, and kills me.

I have never seen mutas work vs roach/hydra. Show me a replay where it does, and the roach hydra player or just pure hydra has decent control. Might take you a while to find a replay like that. :P

I'll ask Baka if he has the replay in the meantime.

[TAhackdZ]

Originally Posted by Zergtastic

He had a few roaches sitting there to defend, with some lings. All died to my hydras. I would mention his mutas came over to help, but it was as if they just evaporated on arrival.

IMO if I was your opponent, and I was harassing you hard with Muta's and then I saw a big ball of hydra's, I would immediately cut Mutalisk production (and keep the ones I've got away from your hydra's), and spam the crap out of Banelings. Your Hydralisk ball will vaporize if it comes anywhere near my base now...

Keep harassing, expand, etc, you get the picture. Hydra's are just not really cost effective; 1 lava, 100m, 50g, and 2 Supply VS an extra 50g for possibly the best map control unit in the game.

Sorry if that was rude but, all I'm saying is that they are the powerhouse unit of the Zerg arsenal. Especially against other Zerg. (Since I'm pretty sure they're a lil faster than slings, all comes back to map control)

In the end though, this is just my opinion. So take it with a grain of salt.

[Satu]

Oh, and I didnt mention you can stop the mutas from moving at all with infestors. I really dont see how mutas are cost effective, its not really map control if all you can do is harrass and lose a few mutas each time you try.

Sure, they can be good if you force your opponent to hydras then techswitch while doing a little bit of damage, but over the long term, it isnt that good.