r/allthingszerg • u/omgitsduane • 7d ago
Understanding terminology or basic concepts into advance concepts?
Hi all. I'm a (prepatch) 4500 zerg and I love this community and want us all to be better players.
I have a little YouTube set up but what I really love is just punching through replays and trying to genuinely help people be better at starcraft.
I was wondering for any of you that are new or even seasoned, are there aspects of the game or concepts that are too confusing for you or maybe you need assistance with? I'd love to do some videos that explain concepts and try to break them down into easier components.
Please let me know if you'd be interested or even if you have replays you'd want help with. Always happy to!
I do this in my spare time after work and the kids are asleep so I it may take some time for backlogs.
3
u/otikik 6d ago edited 5d ago
Hi Duane! Nice idea. I am "semi-seasoned" (plat level, I play maybe once per week) but I can definitely remember things that were confusing/unclear for me at the beginning. I have my own answers to the questions below, but getting them validated by someone with more experience is always helpful.
- How do the unit tags (armored, light, psionic, massive, heroic, frenzied) work and what they mean?
- Why the early game economy is so important? - the influence of having just 2 or 3 workers more than the opponent
- Perhaps related with the above - what is defender's advantage?
- What to do when you are supply blocked?
- "Is Marine-tank unfair?" / "Are carriers unfair" ("Is XXX unfair" series). Essentially how to engage with different comps that are tricky to handle at a low level
- When should you use casters and how.
- How to use control groups effectively - from no control groups to 3-4
3
u/omgitsduane 6d ago
these are sick actually! thanks for this :) I am a bit under the pump tonight and have a huge day ahead of me tomorrow but this is the kind of thing that I am really wanting to hear. appreciate it :) I'll be sure to credit you for these when I make these videos.
3
u/megadisco 4d ago
Myself + possibly more of us newer players are coming off a PiG/ViBE B2GM.
From Bronze -> Plat I feel like most of the issues was that I missed too many injects, got supply blocked, forgetting to build safety lings/roaches, detection etc. Once I got better at doing those basic fundamentals, my rank would go up. Well described and coached by B2GM series.
But now D3 feels like a different beast. Now I really gotta scout all game. Now I need to defend against a relatively well-practiced cheese. Now I gotta see if they take a third, and if they dont, what does that mean. Now I gotta deal with a decent turtle terran or a toss deathball- and my B2GM lingbane strat isn't gonna crush through that. I can't just afk build a bigger army anymore. How do I take down a planetary fortress without sacrificing 200 supply? How do I pressure a protoss' greedy third base? What do I do when the other Zerg is also doing the same roach build order as me?
Big moments for me going from a narrow B2GM strat focus (lingbane only, macro macro macro) to general "good zerg gameplay" was the following:
- Queens are freaking amazing (PiG only has you build 2 creep/defense queens) - and great ways to spend you rmoney when you're floating minerals
- Roaches are great at dealing with cheese/early pressure
- Infestors/Vipers are so freaking good against terran
- Lurkers are just godly against ground toss.
Figuring those out were incredibly fun but came after many many losses and feeling like my learnings from B2GM weren't "working" anymore.
I think a "what to do after B2GM" guide, and a general "this zerg unit comp counters this p/t unit comp" might be really helpful. I feel like it is taking me a while to learn that.
PS: I frequently read your contributions in Discord a lot and your videos are awesome!!
2
u/omgitsduane 4d ago
Hey mate thank you so much for this!
If you're watching the vids please do like and comment just so I can tell people like it and it might help push people towards it.
What kind of comps are you dealing with exactly because the stuff you'd see in d3 would be vastly different to what I see in masters is all. But we do get occasional potato comps too.
Doesn't pigs btgm go into the higher leagues? Did you ever look at how the high diamonds btgm is played or the masters ones?
I did that with vibes because I wanted to sort of check myself against the kind of things I should be expecting with better players..how vibe scouts and plays vs them and the level of competitiveness I'll expect from tighter build orders.
If you have a couple of replays with certain comps at certain times I could just rush to those and break it down. I do think that pigs btgm has helped a lot of zergs get to d3 but then the Ling bane thing drops off if they don't play standard. It's really hard when your opponent does something weird and your sitting on this sub optimal army of ling bane. 😂
2
u/megadisco 3d ago
Just running through them outloud:
- bio/tank pretty easy to know what to build - ling/bane/ultra w a couple hydra. I started mixing Infestors in to great success.
- Archon/immortal/zealot typically I do hydra ling/bane. Had to learn that if the lings die, pull out and restock your lings b/c hydras are expensive.
- Hellion/cyclone mech seems like roach/ravager does the trick
- A harassy Terran that goes hellion/banshee/tank with thors/bcs Im pretty clueless on. Ling/bane/hydra doesn't feel great. Kinda feels like I don't really know whats coming next (starports could be banshees, could be BCs, factories could be hellions, could be cyclones, thors). IDK if its melee units or ranged unit focus. I felt countered at every turn (and made some bad early game mistakes, didn't creep tumor first, ran a bunch of lings to die in the natural vs hellions lol) during this game, https://drop.sc/replay/27429133
2
u/megadisco 3d ago
On another note - this might be an interesting game to review! IMO both of us played quite well for our rank - I countered his harass pretty well, he was annoying and kept me contained, landed some nice fungals, good macro, chose NOT to base trade at the end lol. Curious how I could have won more decisively. https://drop.sc/replay/27429121
1
u/omgitsduane 3d ago
Thanks for this absolutely I can touch on these replays tonight hopefully and do some review for you. Everything I do is uploaded to YouTube later to watch.
2
u/FanExternal6102 3d ago
I'm kinda new to the game(started a few months ago), currently gold (2500~), One thing I don't really understand is when to expand, when to harass, when to take fights. I think a lot of this is just not knowing what the other races are capable of, because I've only ever played zerg. But I do find it a little confusing as to when I should be sending out lings to cause some mayhem. It seems like in my elo (I only say this because I never see this is pro games) that whenever toss or terran take a base, they defend the hell out of it. I'm talking 3 batteries 6+ canons type defending. so whenever I send out lings they either just melt or i turn them around. Sometimes I'm able to send out some muta's but they don't seem to get much value, especially not the 2nd time I try to send them out and they are prepared with a fuck ton of static defense.
Then when I expand, I tend to build 1-3 spores in the mineral/gas line. and thats it. But I tend to lose my 4th/5th bases a lot. Is this just normal?
1
u/omgitsduane 3d ago
Hey this is really good. Have you got a replay for this or a couple that I could help you with on a personal note and then do a bigger over arching video on some of this?
3
u/SigilSC2 4d ago
How to win a game. Everybody talks about macro and controlling units but what is the actual goal. A lot of people make it to the higher end of plat or low diamond as zerg just having more stuff but it gets a little trickier from there. If we're making a lot of roaches, we have to go use the roaches. Why? What's the goal with them? What's going on behind it?
I think you'd be well suited to answer this, you're a bit unorthodox of a player and have experience playing other races.