Topic
The anal-throbbing curse that is ZvZ
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Open with baneling expands. Basically, 14 gas, 14 pool, 21 hatch with a queen, and 4 lings in between. Drone hard, and use overlords to scout incoming lings. Get speed first, then baneling nest, and keep your lings in base. Make banelings and lings if you see a push, but otherwise drone. Then just mass roach/hydra and win :D
The problem isn't metagame or any trickiness. In my opinion, ZvZ is simply a battle of who macros better and who has the better upgrades/positioning. |
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I love the micro battle of early game ZvZ. Others don't.
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9 overlord
14 gas 14 pool 15 overlord As soon as your pool is done get ling speed, a queen, 4-6 lings and pull drones off of gas. Expand as soon as you have the money (20-21 supply) Put 2 drones back on gas and get a baneling nest as soon as you have 50 gas Pressure with lings/blings. If the pressure is working mass more Zerglings. If not, build drones build a roach warren then build more drones. When both bases have plenty of drones expand again, grab 2 more gas, start lair and double upgrades. Mass roaches. Get 2-2 and hydras or infestors. Expand again. Mass more roaches. If you haven't won at this point you're at leat high diamond or you haven't been attacking enough. Keep your money at ZERO. gl hf! |
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To get past the baneling wars you need banelings Lol. The best tip is to never send in banelings in more then sets of 2. 2 banelings will kill other banelings so it's most effecient. If you ahve this habbit of putting 8 or 10 banelings on one hot key stop. Because it's very inneffecient, and that's how you lose games. I suggest working on your mouse speed, because you won't have enough room for this many hot keys. Also you never want to throw away your banelings when someoen is pressuring you, as soon as your banelings die you lose your power and their speedlings flood your base. So if you're going to attack him with your banelings make sure you have more banelings. Always have banelings early and keep morphing them when you are being pressured.
If he's doing a 1 base baneling all-in you don't want to defend your natural with roaches. you have to defend with queen and spine until you can get the economy to support a roach switch. putting down a roach warren before a spine or extra queens will just get you killed. Because he'll just have more stuff then you. the tech switch is too expensive and takes time. So you have to build spines or queens until his attacks become inefficient. You can only switch to roach when you feel you have an army advantage and he doesn't have room to pressure you with lings and banes. People don't open one base roach because it sucks economically and speed lings are very strong against it. It's a build that sacrifices too much economy to be safe, and loses to speedling expand or hatch first. If you really dislike banelings just put down 1 or 2 spines very early. It's very hard to pressure two spines early. Also important to put 2 queens on ramp. If he gets in your main it's basically GG. You can 14/14 or you can hatch first. If you do hatch first you want to delay your gas get two queens on the ramp as soon as possible and put a spine or two down in your natural, ASAP. This is actually really safe, but you give up map control and you get a slower ling speed. Hatch first only really gets countered by something like a 7 pool ling rush with spines. Which is why you see a lot of pros switch up their styles and run 14/14 in tournaments. Hatch first is a good build for ladder, if you run into a cheeser try to defend with drone, and if you lose just leave no gg. If you 14/14 you can pressure/scout. see what he's up too. If he's doing a hatch first you should try to kill a drone or two at his natural because you will be behind economically if you don't. If the drones aren't in his natural he's not gaining a lead. He will only have more larva then you if his queens aren't on his ramp, you can keep his queens on his ramp by threatening a speedling run by against his slow lings, if he lets you in the main you can kill his drones there. If he is doing a 14/14 you'll want to figure out if he's doing a bane all-in or a speedling expand. If he's doing a speedling expand you can expand yourself if he's doing a baneling all-in you want to put down a spine immediately in your main, and transfer it to your natural once that is finished. defend with queens on ramp spine at natural and lings, and you win ez pz. TLDR Spines, queens, and banes |
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I think ZvZ is fun, I just don't like how it comprises roughly 75% of all my ladder games.
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Edited by Fawxkitteh on 4/28/12 12:16 AM (PDT)
Get speed first, then baneling nest, and keep your lings in base. If you're keeping your lings in your base, why get speed first? I 15 Hatch and get Baneling nest first. The only reason I struggle with ZvZ at all is because I currently refuse to make Roaches, ever. Which wouldn't be a problem in itself, if I was better at scouting and stuff. Oh, and if I didn't forget grabbing my gas and end up with 1000 mins and 100 gas... |
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When it gets unbearable I just start throwing matches so I can spend my time playing something I actually enjoy. Kinda hard to move up the ladder but oh well.
They really need to put a 3 game cap on the number of mirror matches in a row. The vast majority would find 4 mirrors in a row way too much so why doesn't Blizzard just implement the bloody cap already? |
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Try going fast lair tech, then muta. In low league zvz often i find that my opponent has no anti air other than queens. Muta ling is very good in zvz. also once if you go fast lair another route would be to get early roach speed. Make sure if you do go fast lair u get ur warren for early defense though, and possibly a spine or two
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I switched to zerg recently, so naturally ZvZ is the most annoying thing on the planet to me.
I eventually decided to open 10 pool every game, kill whatever I can with the early 6 lings and delay mining while expanding, macroing, etc. They can't expand till the lings are gone, and if you kill 3 or more drones and pull them off the mineral line a good bit, you've done enough damage to equalize. With newer players you'll often do more than just that. |
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Edited by tEhbatZ on 4/30/12 9:34 AM (PDT)
No. Do not EVER open with a speedling and/or baneling expand or else you have a 99.99% chance the game will end up being micro battles (ling bling vs ling bling, first person to misclick loses! herp derp derp).
Learn how to 15 hatch 15 pool. Once you figure out how to do it you can hold any type of early rush--be it a 7rr, baneling allin, speedling allin, 6pool, etc. Anytime anyone allins it becomes a free win, and then the games where they don't allin become good macro games where ZvZ actually gets interesting. You will end up seeing crazy things like roach hydra infestor vs ling ultra infestor, or corruptor broodlord, or roach muta, or etc - it gets really interesting and fun once you get past the 8 minute mark. |
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I feel like zvz is one of the better matchups in the game, for Zerg, in my opinion.
Pretty much everything is on the table. No unit is useless in ZvZ. Plus, it can really force you to become good at scouting, because both players can production switch on a dime, and remax on something completely different than what just got killed. It can be a super interesting matchup, when both players commit to playing a non-cheesy, non-all-in game. If you are afraid of early pressure, there are ways to prevent it, or be ready for it. Use overlords to scout, because of lack of early AA from zerg, this is virtually free map control early game. Make a few spines. If you aren't going to pressure early, then you can afford to spend some money on spines instead of lings. Get roaches, wall off ramp with them and spines. I think roach/hydra is probably a general purpose build for zvz that works very well. It's easy to control, the biggest worry is keeping the hydras up with the roaches, and you get high health and high dps. You don't even need that many hydras, unless your opponent goes air. Roach/infestor require a bit more mouse skill... fungals on fast units like mutas or lings are hard to get sometimes. Hydras just attack things. It's a pretty intense matchup, and good macro is the key to the matchup, as long as you can prevent death by all-in early in the game. The 10 pool aggression suggestion is something that might work. It gives you lings early to defend against cheesy ling builds, and if your opponent isn't being aggressive, it lets you force them to delay a hatch or to spend more money defending it, giving you time to macro up, and tech. |
No. Do not EVER open with a speedling and/or baneling expand or else you have a 99.99% chance the game will end up being micro battles (ling bling vs ling bling, first person to misclick loses! herp derp derp). Really? Because Baneling expand has become my go to build for ZvZ at my level, and it's working wonders. I've only lost 1 zvz this season because of it (played in season 2-3, then took a break) , and that's because I was mis-clicking so much. I think I delayed my actual bust by about a minute and a half. With no Zerg normal wall off, at silver at least, players don't build more then one queen initially, so it's very easy to get 6 banelings into a base regardless of FE, other banelings, or roaches. From there, 2-4 banelings kill off any forces aside from the queen and spines or the odd roach, and then lings clean up any spines and the queen, with the last 2-4 banelings (depending on how many you needed to eliminate defending forces) to decimate his line. |
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zvz...
early game build - 10 pool 10 gas 10 OV when pool pops get ling sets and a queen and pull the drones off gas for ling speed mid game build - 13 pool 15 gas 15 ov drone and OV while getting a queen yadda yadda 7 roach but instead of charging in with the roaches, keep them to defend a 5 min hatch if you survive, go infestor - ling - roach infestors melt zerg late game build - 14 gas 14pool 22 other gas lair tech get - i think its called zen one - base muta? then react to what hes doing with harassment remember that zvz is all about an arms race for the next unit type WHO got first to banes WHO got first to roach WHO got first to air yadda yadda keeping that in mind is worth its weight in gold but my favorite zvz's are roach infestor ling with a few corruptors for OVERLORD attacks the 10 10 10 build makes lings forever, try that. but dont get lazy to tech out of it, you will need an expo and banes eventually also in zvz = again about the arms race, get armor upgrades the whole time, i find it helps no matter what zvz build both YOU or your opponant is going, if your ahead in armor, sometimes that means his banelings die for no kills, and often times, it makes your roaches and infestors IMMORTAL beyond reconing |
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in my opinion you guys shouldnt give him such specific builds in the lower league. The best tip i can give you is how I learned which is pretty much just trial and error. See what works see what doesnt work, playing zerg to me is pretty much just doing something when you feel like you can safely do it i.e. droning and teching, if you dont feel safe then save larva and build your army. That's pretty much the importnat thing in lower leagues, when to drone and when to make army thats how i learned and I started in bronze league u can do it its really not that hard but expect to lose a lot early but eventually you'll get to the point where zvz is really enjoyable, i personally love it more than the other matchups
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I came to understand ZvZ, and now I love it. I prefer mass upgraded lings + infestor, and corrupters if they go mutalisk. Then I can move into infestor corrupter brood lord. another nice thing about it is that I can use the speed of my lings to defend multiple bases. All in all, its a good strategy.
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