Zerg woes Thanks to Stephano
It’s been a while since I wrote any Starcraft thoughts but I’ve still been playing regularly. My focus shifted to coding in 2012 and around the same time, I was bumped down again into Platinum and have remained there basically since. It was frustrating but I didn’t mind so much as I was less focused on the game. Now it’s starting to get to me though since I know I’m playing really well, probably better than ever, and certainly better than I ever was playing when I was firmly in Diamond in earlier seasons.
The primary reason I can’t break back into Diamond, and the source of my frustration, is PVZ. PVZ has entered a meta-game phase where Zerg has figured out any 2-base timing a Protoss can throw. Stephano has popularized a winning style that basically takes 3 hatches immediately, drones hard and pushes out with a maxxed army of roaches with plus+1 attack. During the course of the build are a bunch of variations for anything the protoss can come up with to try and knock them off course, including stargate play, 6/7-gate gateway timings, or various 2-base robo timings. It’s seemingly uncrackable to me, and for a while I was literally at about a 10% win-rate versus Zerg, knocking my MMR down so low that the Protoss and Terran opponents I was facing were so easy I was averaging 80% win rates.
What I’ve been working on now is taking a fast 3rd versus a standard 3-hatch zerg. Protoss has a window between about 8 minutes and 10 minutes when any 2-base timing would hit. Protoss can deny scouting only a little bit before this so zerg is always trying to check out the building composition just before this window. As long as I have a few gateways and a robo facility, it looks sufficiently like a 2-base robo timing that I can put zerg on the defensive. I’m even trying to send out a probe to proxy pylon the zerg 3rd, but in a fairly obvious way, to draw defensive roaches. Meanwhile I take my third at around the 9 minute mark and build another 4-5 gateways as a wall at the third. (Most maps allow for a decent wall.) The entire time I’ve been chrono’ing out upgrades and pumping out sentries. By the time the zerg realizes I have my third and decides to test my defenses I can have, I believe, about 6 stalkers and 6 sentries and a couple immortals and big warpins ready to reinforce. Sentries and good sim city are the key to deny roach pressure. You can never have enough immortals to stand toe-to-toe with a 3-hatch roach force. But with excellent zoning, even 2 immortals can do wonders. It’s very difficult for me, and I don’t claim to have it figured out. But I’ve won a few games against this basic style now. An additional problem is managing all the variations that a zerg can do up until then so I need to not assume too much about the build and stay diligent in my scouting.
What Day[9] says is also very true I realize. Stick to the plan. Too often when I get frustrated and start losing a streak of games, I begin improvising and trying random shit. I need to just stop playing when that happens and I never can. Once I stepped back and came up with the plan above I was playing with a clear purpose: take my third at the 9:00 mark. As long as you have a plan, your whole playstyle is so much cleaner. Your mind is clear to deal with your opponent and what he’s doing. Between games is when you question whether your plan was the best and decide on any alterations, not during. I wish I had stopped hitting my head against the wall of Stephano-style Zerg earlier and come up with a better plan. I might have got back to Diamond by now if I had. As it is, I think I may be able to crack it again soon. I’m floating right near the top of Plat and still kicking reasonable ass versus Protoss and especially Terran. Ironically I can beat a cheesing zerg much easier than a standard Zerg, but I lose frequently to cheesing Protoss still.
blog comments powered by Disqus