ZvP – Late Game, Early Broodlords (15min)

A different take on the mid/late game ZvP, this style revolves around skipping infestors to get a much earlier hive to morph in broodlords. If you build only 16 roaches with speed for mid-game defense and a much larger speedling army, you can bank enough gas to start 6-8 broodlords by 15minutes.

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ZvZ – Using 3-Base Economy to Max Out

The goal in mid/late game ZvZ is to max out with 4-6 infestors, 12-16 hydras, and the rest roaches.  With a fully saturated 3 base economy (66 Drones Total), you can read this point between the 15 and 18 minute mark.

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ZvT – High Master Practice with Commentary

You don’t have to use aggression to win the game (Although you can!).  Sometimes, a little timing push is exactly what you need to get hellions off your back while securing a nice economic lead.

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Useful facts about Overlord Speed Increase and Queen Range Increase

By Zelniq

• ZvT Ohana: Now will barely be safe to send 1st overlord directly to the safe spot behind opponent’s natural geysers.
• ZvT Korhal Compound: Not only will you now safely reach the cliff above enemy’s natural expo, but you can also first quickly peek at their wall-off above their ramp before retreating to safety
• ZvT Daybreak: You will now be safe to send your 1st overlord to the space (or those high up, blue box things that also hide your overlord) behind opponent’s natural geysers.
• ZvT Cloud Kingdom: Now more than enough time to safely reach the cliff above their natural. If you wanted, you can also send it straight behind their main (that large area behind their gases). The only reason I guess is to either check their gas timings or suicide into main to spot build (suiciding now scouts more too).
• ZvT Metalopolis: You can send your first overlord to check if he spawned close by air, then if he’s not there, you can send it cross-spawn, in that large airspace behind their main and still be safe.
• ZvZ Antiga Shipyard: Sending your 1st overlord to either of the close mains, if you found him you can now spot if they went an early pool before you place your 15 hatch down. Then just plant a pool instead and you’re ahead. Also FYI sending a drone right at 9 supply to the other 2 locations, as long as you go only halfway up the ramp for the first base you scout (to peak if there is creep), even if they were cross spawn your drone should scout an early pool just before you place a 15 hatch.
• ZvT Antiga Shipyard: Send your first overlord cross spawn directly to the space behind the natural minerals and it’ll arrive barely in time to be safe, while also glimpsing their wall-off. This is mostly useful for tourney versions where they’re cross only, but it’s nice on ladder too because it also scouts the center for any proxy raxes, and it feels cool. Also you can send your 2nd overlord to the clockwise spawn if you think they’re there, to the same spot behind natural and it’ll be safe. Unless you want the 2nd to always scout your own natural for bunkers.
• ZvT Shakuras Plateau: Send OL close-by-air, if you see him there, keep going floating over his base, check his wall-off above his ramp, then go to the airspace on the other side safely (so you can check his natural later easily).

Where Queen Range 5 will be most useful:
All matchups:

• Queens will sit further behind your army when defending attacks, in a safer area. It will be noticeably easier to keep them alive.
• 1 queen will be able to kill a scouting worker than runs right by the queen now! (if the scout tries to skirt around the queen it should survive, provided it’s not at a choke) Also of course it will be harder to fully scout for what buildings zerg’s made.
• Players may sometimes deem it worthwhile to get a couple more queens than normal for defensive purposes. Why? 1 Queen does more dps than a stalker (provided that unit has 0 armor. Armor is twice as effective vs the queen’s 2xAttack, and queens attack fairly quickly), and with 5 range + the ability to tranfuse and spread creep, players may want to get a couple extra before they really get their army production going. Just note that since kiting with queens is pointless and they’re molasses off creep, and their dps drops quickly vs anything with Armor, they’re not going to really be a great fighter unit in your army comp, and since they pose almost no threat for an attack, units will often be the preferred choice. Unless you nydus into their base
• (probably not worth reading) : The unique situations where you built many queens to defend vs air, and you didn’t take much damage, and then decide to counterattack because they’re vulnerable (often they are depending on their air units to keep them temporarily alive, which is where your queens come in). Well now if you attack with army + queens, queens will probably hit ground stuff now too.
  ZvT:
• Queens will be quite a bit better at pushing back a hellion ‘contain’ (so you can safely spread tumors)
• Will help defend bunker rushes (attacking scvs building bunkers, marines).
• Hellions (range 5), marines (5), and reapers (4.5), will no longer kite queens without taking hits. They will just generally be better at dealing with most terran units as they are no longer outranged by most of them.
  ZvP:
• Stalkers (range 6) harassing queens will be slightly easier on the zerg
• Defending zealot harass slightly better
• Very situationally help vs cannon rushes (particularly the 3 pylon wall below ramp can be safely hit now by a queen. It takes exactly 1 ingame minute for a queen to kill 1 pylon.)
• Just generally be a little more useful at fending off early rushes or small attacks.
  ZvZ:
• When you’ve 2 queens blocking ramp while lings attack your spine/s, now your queen can often attack back while standing there.
• Better at denying baneling run-bys
• A bit better at dealing with ling harassment
• Hatch-first builds in particular will be slightly easier to do/better than it is now.
• Situationally vs roaches (queens will outrange them), like when they’re on hold position behind your mineral line when they went around your spines.
• Some zvz timings involve roaches/queens/infestors (usually vs muta builds) so they may be marginally more useful there (though they’re mostly for antiair and transfuse still).

Did you know?

Queens do 8 damage to ground, but it’s split into 2 Attacks of 4 damage each, so Armor is twice as effective vs queens. But more importantly, the attack animation to do both attacks is so long that there’s essentially no time to move in between attacks. If you try, you’ll just end up delaying the next attack and doing less dps.
So basically, don’t try to kite (move in-between attacks) with queens, range 5 or not, doesn’t matter. (technically you could kite a zealot but it’s not worth it.

*HOWEVER* when Blizzard changes the look of the attack animation like they said they would, this might change. But logically, assuming they just make the tentacles look longer, it would either stay the same or be even slower (worse!).

Hello everyone, I’ve created this discussion to access the value of the three buffs that will be released today. As a zerg player, I’m pretty happy with the changes – the protoss observer build doesn’t effect ZvP too much, and the overlord and queen upgrades are definitely helpful. I’m hoping to spur some discussion below on some of the ways Zerg players can make use of these changes:

1) Protoss: Observer build time decreased from 40 –> 30.

Perhaps some protoss players can respond with how significant this 10 second decrease will be. It will mean you can get the observer out faster, and in a match like PvT that means earlier scouting AND and an earlier immortal. There may also be value to producing more than 1 observer, since they build so quickly.

2) Zerg: Overlord speed increased from 0.4687 to 0.586

Similar to the observer buff, the overlord buff will be most helpful for scouting. It means overlords can travel across the map quicker, and potentially escape onto high ground in situations where they previously would die. I’m hoping this speed buff will be enough to save the lives of many scouting overlords!

3) Zerg: Queen anti-ground attack range increased from 3 to 5

Scouting/Responding in Early, Mid and Late Game

In this Zerg vs Zerg lesson we study how to apply and defend early pressure, how to scout and respond to opponents’ lair tech, and the correct late game composition.

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ZvZ – Practice/Commentary with an Introduction to the “Multitasking Trainer”

A basic walk-through of some practice matches in ZvZ.  Also be sure to go to create a game and select the “Multitasking trainer + creep spread”.  Handy little map to improve your apm and multitasking!

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ZvX – Bronze-Level Coaching: Build order and mechanics

This lesson starts very basic with some important concepts for newer players:  Rallying, hotkeying, and drone saturation.

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PvZ Timing Attacks with Videos

Any protoss players out there looking for some new aggressive strategies to punish Zerg opponents can thank Alejandrisha for posting a compilation build orders and videos analyzing some well-known and effective timing attacks.

Click Here for the first Youtube video showcasing the 2Gas 7-Gate All-In.

Click Here to read this article on TeamLiquid.

-Alejandrisha

Bronze to Master, Improving Terran Mechanics

I watch a lot of games, I read a ton of guides. I love this game and that’s why I wanted to do this. I’m a masters level player on NA, nothing special but I play an extremely strong macro style. When I look around at all the newbie guides available, when I look at the help me threads or the battle.net forums all I see are people asking very specific questions and getting answers, but I don’t see anything that really hits the root of the problem for people. There’s some fantastic guides out there on youtube, and of course there’s the Day9 daily. I felt something was missing though, everybody talks about making workers but nobody nobody has put together something detailed and concrete on the matter. There’s tons of great players talking over a build order or talking while they play but there’s almost nothing out there that has a huge amount of preplanning and effort put into it, and I want to change that. (day9 being the exception, I gained tons of respect for how much he much put into each daily.)

I’ve wanted to do this guide for a very long time, but I finally decided to go ahead and do it. I remember Day9 saying on a regular basis to just go do it if you wanted to do anything. I’ve created several videos on the core portions of the game to try and help people grow. The videos detail taking your game from the very start of making workers, to being able to make huge armies with stellar upgrades at masters level. I do this slowly, layering in new elements of play until you’re ready to macro like a master (or better).

The goal with this, is that by the time you finish this guide and can execute it in your sleep you won’t simply be following a build order… you’ll have a much deeper understanding of the game. The goal is that when you’re finished with the first 9 videos you’ll be able to watch a pro play a game and be able to jump into an ai game and figure out his build on your own. No matter your skill level, measure yourself up to the benchmarks I set and you’ll see improvement in your game. I will provide teaching episodes, and gameplay ones where I emulate the lessons against that leagues opponents.

Click Here to view Bronze to Master Episode One:  The Basics

Click Here to read the rest of this article on Team Liquid.

- Filter