Terran Vs Zerg... possible whinge-warning....

Dustaz

ahh, good old terran whine. It makes the world go around.

Before i start. My name is Dustaz and I am a terran player. There, saying it is half the battle. Im in platinum, but really i got there by having one strat pretty well nailed down and im actually just a gold player really.

A couple of simple points.
1. Terran are currently imbalanced. The game is only just out and not 4 (?) years old like BW when it attained greatness. We are still to get the first balance patch (next week folks and terran are getting nerfed!) so yeah, theres going to be problems.

2. The real problems that manifest due to this imbalance is mostly at higher diamond level play. This is the only place that one can truly compare 'like for like'. Everyone is roughly equally skilled, has more or less the same hidden rating etc.

3. Complaining about terran is FOTM. Outmacro'd? Terran is imba. Outmicro'd? Terran is imba. Flat out beaten by a better player? Terran is imba. Theres a WORLD of a difference between linking a replay of morrow (for the most part actually outplaying idra) and talking about gold level play.


Dev, you said youd done your placements and got into gold and are finding it tough. I assume you are somewhere about 50 games played in that division? If this is the case you havent played out your 'hidden rating' fully yet. It takes a lot of games for that to truly come into play and you play players that are definately at your level. Are you sure your not just getting beaten by players that are just better than you? At gold level, 'Having more stuff' beats faction differences hands down. Even at platinum level, if you have more stuff, youll win. Yes, terran are imbalanced, but you will still win if your a better player (in gold). I get beaten by zerg pretty regularly when i could have probably won if i was just a little better at utilising the Awesome Power of Terran. Then again, that goes for most matches i play.

Seriously. Stop whining about terran and start practising macro and reactionary strats.

AtomCannister

Add me,
Atom.329

I'm terran, I can help you out if you want.
I'm diamond so I could tell you 1 or 2 things, just to get you on your way.
I'll also try save some replays for you of good zerg play.

hf

BKtje

What does 20 Marines, 10 Maurauders and 3 medivacs cost and what can I spend that amount on to get something any way close to stopping that ball.

2300 minerals and 550 gas but that doesn't include any of the upgrades needed.
I hope i did my sums right

Jonny7

Just a quick backround to this whole thing..

Blizzard balances the game from the top down, i.e. highest level players play the game and they fix it from there.. now, most of these players are Korean, and for whatever reason a lot of them actually played as Zerg from the beginning.

Also against Zerg was the fact that during the Beta Zerg was incredibly strong, roaches were ONLY 1 supply and came with 2 armor - crazy, hydras had more HP, queens moved faster, spinecrawlers moved faster and burrowed quicker, creep tumours were quicker.. basically their whole early game was very strong..

Blizzard had to curb all this early strength, and by the end of the beta the game wasn't fully balanced since so many changes were being made (there was a patch almost every week) the game was set as of the last patch which turned out to be good for Terran, average for Protoss and not the best for Zerg.

Personally, I feel Zerg are strong in mid and late mid game, but yes weakish early on. This is amplified for newer players, however Blizzard knows this and will try to address in new patch. Indeed check the server rankings and races, Zerg is generally the least popular race by quite some bit (although some of this is also be due to their odd mechanics)

Solution to all this?
Well, tough it out and wait for the patch OR.. the best option - play Random..

The Protoss mechanics literally take 3 or 4 games to learn..
Keep making probes, learn to build a building then shift click the probe back to the minerals, remember to build pylons and make 4 warpgates, thats it.

Terran are intuitive, like any strategy game, use your hellions to roast the Zerg mineral line and force them to go ground defence, while you build a starport, then float onto the reactor and switch buildings to pump vikings and rape all their overlords, then very slowly go for battlecruisers while Zerg sits there sweating. Basically you can be the bad guys and take all your Zerg frustration out on.. Zerg.

So, the game is cool, balance patch soon, and Zerg playing Random for 'research' purposes is manly.

seraphimvc

it is just annoying that people knows terran is imba right now and all jump in to abuse it - P/Z players who beated by them feel unfair and then can lead to stop playing in the worst case(happened to my toss friend caused he insist to use toss and hate to lose).

and yes you can argue that if a player is good enough, even at the current situation, he can still manage to get in plat/diamond. Which is the reason i still play 1v1 sometimes but not very often - i know the game is imba right now and i cant persuade myself to play more imba game (especially bad to me zerg), can i?:pac: on the other hand if i am a terran i will probably rush to diamond before the patch lol

all in all, it is just a game in the end of the day, it is for entertainment purposes (to people like me who is not looking forward to make money from the game in pro scene). dont forget BW spent 5 years( i read that somewhere so i am not 100% sure lol) to be balanced and SC2 is a goddamn new game. the beta certainly helps making sc2 at least is not a unplayable broken game.

balance will defo be made in future (you wait and see, maruader!!:pac:), or else, i will simply stop playing so:P have faith in blizzard tho.

NeoSlicerZ

People who QQ about balance instead of simply trying to improve their play. Sure the matchups might be favoured against you, keep trying despite this. If stuff gets patched cool, you'll be even better then. Rather than this **** about sitting on your hands moaning. About your toss friend losing PvT and quitting, lol seriously, protoss players don't have much room to complain, basic MM can be beaten, tanks are not the complete and utter bogey men some players think they are. I have issues with how powerful Thors and battlecruiser are but apart from that, PvT is pretty balanced.

pixelburp

haha, only just read this thread now, having spent a frustrating weekend of being mushed by repeated Terran cheesers. Nearly all the thoughts that ran through my head then have been echoed here, from the general imbalance against the Zerg, to the hatred for the Kulas map (impossible to win as Zerg).

Sure enough, nearly all my Terran losses came against a MMM tactic; now, almost from the get-go my tactic is defensive and reactionary, rather than taking the initiative (bar the odd baneling / speedling harrass); I'm now so scared of the MMM build that I sat back expecting it, barely ever venturing out, only to then get mushed by something even lamer, like mass Battlecruisers :rolleyes: I don't buy this idea of "just get better". That's too glib by half; there's simply no straight counter to the MMM that doesn't involve a mixture of luck & hail-mary play.

Anecdotely, the last MMM I beat (blistering sands) was purely by fluke: the other guy mistakenly drove his force (with siege tanks; Jesus Christ like) up the ramp to my base. He got them all stuck, and I had some upgraded banelings waiting with some +1 speedlings. I think he presumed my force was spent and so took out my expansion before rolling up to the base. I had 3 speedlings to spare by the end. It's all very well saying harass-this and upgrade-that, but the Terrans usually just seal off their base.

That said, I am very proud that I'm currently #2 in my league's rankings & the highest zerg player (there are only 3 in the top 20, that in itself should tell a lot if that's reflected across the other leagues people are in). However, that pride is simply because I feel I am constantly up against it.

Xios

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

you do know every creep tumor you put down can produce one more for free after it has settled. Depending on map you only need to put down 2 creep tumors via queen after that you just keep expanding them via this ability every now and then.

I... Did... Not... Know... This.... :eek:
Been getting 1 more queen than i needed to or been wasting larva, ffs.

BlitzKrieg

Xios wrote: »

I... Did... Not... Know... This.... :eek:
Been getting 1 more queen than i needed to or been wasting larva, ffs.

glad I can help.

seraphimvc

NeoSlicerZ wrote: »

People who QQ about balance instead of simply trying to improve their play. Sure the matchups might be favoured against you, keep trying despite this. If stuff gets patched cool, you'll be even better then. Rather than this **** about sitting on your hands moaning. About your toss friend losing PvT and quitting, lol seriously, protoss players don't have much room to complain, basic MM can be beaten, tanks are not the complete and utter bogey men some players think they are. I have issues with how powerful Thors and battlecruiser are but apart from that, PvT is pretty balanced.

thats what i told him too :pac: quitting the game is just silly to me, sc2 is not like a broken game. there are imbalances in sc2 atm but it is still a fun game to play. it is actually such a good job from blizzard seeing they fix tonnes of stuffs from beta.

but in PvT i think the problem is with Marauder, slow shoot = dead to toss grounds and not everyone can play good forcefield.

and no, i dont agree with the 'Sure the matchups might be favoured against you, keep trying despite this. If stuff gets patched cool, you'll be even better then.'

it is NOT fun to play ZvT at all. i face mostly terran in 1v1 - either i die with their all-in reaper rush(some map is fatal with this) or their MM early rush. MMM is not a big problem to me caused' if i do it right (flank from 2 or 3 directions) i will kill the bio mass. the usual way to win a terran is either he made some stupid mistake or it will be a long game that i need to nonstop deny his expo, starve him out and kill him. and then when i watch the replay and look at every battle we had, why is that i always need a higher value army(with additional micro) to kill his auto attack MMM??

it is just too much micro/macro to outplay a terran - hey i am a common player who loves the strategic elements in this game and if i am playing against someone i dont wanna feel like i am torturing myself:pac: i think i have a replay somewhere i might throw up later.

BlitzKrieg

it is NOT fun to play ZvT at all. i face mostly terran in 1v1 - either i die with their all-in reaper rush(some map is fatal with this) or their MM early rush. MMM is not a big problem to me caused' if i do it right (flank from 2 or 3 directions) i will kill the bio mass. the usual way to win a terran is either he made some stupid mistake or it will be a long game that i need to nonstop deny his expo, starve him out and kill him. and then when i watch the replay and look at every battle we had, why is that i always need a higher value army(with additional micro) to kill his auto attack MMM??

I've been trying to devise map specific openers to counter this. At the moment the best I got is on steppes of war due to its small size I double gas steal terran/protoss from the beginning and use the cancel trick on my own gas to make up for the lost workers a bit. Then tech to roaches for protoss/banelings for terran.

Its not perfect by a long shot but it has stopped early reaper rushes and put a spanner in a warpgate build/fast pheonix.

Aside from that my only notes have been on where to push conflicts (on lost temple you want to keep all the fighting to near the watchtowers as you can defende 3 bases from there with ease. Xel Naga Caverns is sort of the same, you'd want to keep the fights to near the gold as its easy to flank and open to use zerg's advantages.

NeoSlicerZ

You'd intentionally double steal gas on SoW? Really? How have you not been 10/12 dual gated. To get the gas before standard protoss timings you'd need to have them before 14 psi. That's 2 drones + 50? minerals. vT you've basically stopped tech and marauders... but he has such a short rush distance he can just marine rush you to death aswell, OR because your eco's in the toilet f/e.

EDIT: Steppes of war is pretty terrible for reaper play anyway with tiny cliffs between the nat and expo.

TheDoc

Have to agree with Dustaz.

I have a torrid time dealing with Protoss at the moment. I wouldnt call them overpowered or my own race (Terran) underpowered. Majority of the time I'm being beaten by better players, and as a new SC player I'm not used to the stuff protoss can do, once I learn that stuff I'll be fine.

No longer am I getting cannon rushed, but sometimes I still find I'm being pylon rushed or something.

Dev if you want to throw some replays up ( or maybe you have) maybe some of us or the more better players can shed some light on it.

I have to agree slightly in that I rub my hands when I play Zerg, because I know that 3 reapers are going to tear the Zerg player apart, and if not outright win delay his units and expansion enough for me to get a big army.

Without watching a replay, but finding that you didnt mention your having reaper trouble ( which is very suprising, its bread and butter against zerg) the most problematic zergs I play usually do the same things.

Expand early and defend it with spines.
Get roaches and zerglings with speed along with banelings.

Thats pretty much all the trouble I get.

I cant even remember your first post at this stage, but if your not getting some serious banelings in your terran matches, you will loose horribly.
Its the one thing that gives me nightmares.

TheDoc

Dev dont know what your moaning about tbh

Three 2v2 games today, 2 of them with blitzkrieg, 6 pool'd the other 6pool and zealot rush.

Literally absolutely nothing you can do, nothing.

****ing stupid.

Skill in this game is literally diamond league only, I feel like sending blizzard an email to bump me into diamond so I've to stop beating or loosing to absolute ****ters.

BlitzKrieg

hehe

yeah it was funny of the 5 games we played. the 2 we won were against diamond and platinum players.

I sort of agree and disagree with TheDoc.

Yeah we got destroyed in 3 games and all 3 involve rushing. But all 3 were different types of rushes.

we had a zealot/zerg rush which put us (a zerg/terran team) in a tight spot cause I needed roaches to deal with zealots and I had gone teched zergling to counter my opposite. Which was completely the wrong tech. If I'd gone fast roaches I would have kept the zealots at bay while his marines would have mopped up the zerglings.

The second rush was zealot/marine rush which is in my opinion somewhat unfair as marines can handle roaches fairly well when zealots tank for them and zerglings are useless against both without speed upgrade or numbers. So I couldnt do anything against that.

The final rush was dual zerg and it was completely my fault. I floundered in my opening BO and went heavy macro to catch up but that put my spawning pool way too late so that rush would have been crushed if I hadnt made that mistake.


So rushing in the game is very strong if you fail to call it. Sometimes it is just worth leaving the drone patrolling a base and be killed to know for sure the opening gambit then to try and bring it back to the line.

Also we really need voice com i'm pretty sure I have ventrilo on here somewhere. If not then skype, msn messenger or xfire are here.

seraphimvc

a rush can be an all-in early attack or a good timing push - thats why Terran is imba atm, either a marine all-in or a MM timing push is hard to be stopped and sadly i think most players(below plat/diamond) are simply stick to an all-in early push, they have no idea what to do if that all-in fails or simple just leave lol. i always scout them and if they are gonna fast push, in team game either we go attack before they come or we fend off and quick counter attack usually will gg the game.

is kinda easy actually to see if a terran can own you or not - he has a nice wall up, use MULE(barely scan you), MM, and tanks. GG!

Dustaz

TheDoc wrote: »

Skill in this game is literally diamond league only, I feel like sending blizzard an email to bump me into diamond so I've to stop beating or loosing to absolute ****ters.

If you cant stop a cheese/all in/timing early push, then your not ready for diamond.

Its exactly the same thing as silver/gold zerg saying that terran is imbalanced.

Im platinum and i get beaten by protoss proxy rush EVERY time. I've tried training it with friends who are diamond and got them to proxy me 5 games in a row. Every time they do it, i know its coming and i cant stop it. Im just not good enough to micro/time it and stop it before im overrun 80% of the time.

When i can stop that, i might be ready for platinum. Untill then, im not.

People need to realise that cheese and all in strats are just that, all in. They are completely and utterly useless against a player who is equipped to repel it and once you can do this, its an instant win.

Practice, Practice, Practice.


Having said all that, it really would be nice to have longer games

NeoSlicerZ

Timing attack =/= all in push though the two overlap at times, a good timing attack is usually when a major upgrade finishes or is about to for you. An all in has no follow up and leaves the player far behind unless they do significant damage.

Longer games require different maps really. I played a 38 min game on scrap station vs my zerg practice partner and a really long one on Desert Oasis. If you want longer games, ladder probably isn't the place to find them. Search for the iCCup maps, I suggest you avoid Fighting Spirit though, it's ****ing huge.

Here's a replay of one of my PvZs tonight on iCCup River Point, huge zerg potential but neither of us were very experienced with the map. There was a lot more he could have done to abuse my nat.

Xios

NeoSlicerZ wrote: »

Here's a replay of one of my PvZs tonight on iCCup River Point, huge zerg potential but neither of us were very experienced with the map. There was a lot more he could have done to abuse my nat.

We need the custom map to view the replay

pixelburp

Dustaz wrote: »

[...]

People need to realise that cheese and all in strats are just that, all in. They are completely and utterly useless against a player who is equipped to repel it and once you can do this, its an instant win.

Practice, Practice, Practice.[...]

Practise is cool n' all - and lords knows I'm trying - but my problem is that as Zerg, I don't feel equipped to counter the MMM steamroller strats of Terran. All I can do is mass banelings at their ramp & say a hail-mary it works, ready to flood the inside with speedlings.

I'm only a bronze, knocking on the door of silver, but I can't find any legitimate zerg strats to breakdown a Terran holed up in his base, building up to that critical mass.

NeoSlicerZ

oh, download it from BNet then, search for iCCup then scroll down for river point.

TheDoc

Dustaz wrote: »

If you cant stop a cheese/all in/timing early push, then your not ready for diamond.

Its exactly the same thing as silver/gold zerg saying that terran is imbalanced.

Im platinum and i get beaten by protoss proxy rush EVERY time. I've tried training it with friends who are diamond and got them to proxy me 5 games in a row. Every time they do it, i know its coming and i cant stop it. Im just not good enough to micro/time it and stop it before im overrun 80% of the time.

When i can stop that, i might be ready for platinum. Untill then, im not.

People need to realise that cheese and all in strats are just that, all in. They are completely and utterly useless against a player who is equipped to repel it and once you can do this, its an instant win.

Practice, Practice, Practice.


Having said all that, it really would be nice to have longer games

Man, you know my pain, dealing with rushing in team games is just simply, fail. No matter how early you scout, its horrid, especially as terran. Theres only so long a wall in will hold for.

NeoSlicerZ

Xios wrote:

We need the custom map to view the replay

Ugh, here's the long ones I played on Desert Oasis and Scrap Station then.

Dustaz

pixelburp wrote: »

Practise is cool n' all - and lords knows I'm trying - but my problem is that as Zerg, I don't feel equipped to counter the MMM steamroller strats of Terran. All I can do is mass banelings at their ramp & say a hail-mary it works, ready to flood the inside with speedlings.

I'm only a bronze, knocking on the door of silver, but I can't find any legitimate zerg strats to breakdown a Terran holed up in his base, building up to that critical mass.

At bronze level, strats simply dont come into it. You just need More Stuff. More Stuff beats Less Stuff every time. In fact, More Stuff is a viable tactic untill diamond level.

Either you attack the terran before his mmm is too big or you use the time it takes for him to gather the army to tech up and repel that attack.

More Stuff

TheDoc

Dustaz wrote: »

At bronze level, strats simply dont come into it. You just need More Stuff. More Stuff beats Less Stuff every time. In fact, More Stuff is a viable tactic untill diamond level.

Either you attack the terran before his mmm is too big or you use the time it takes for him to gather the army to tech up and repel that attack.

More Stuff

Cant believe how true this is. My micro is pretty ok and early on was finding it difficult to beat low skilled players.

I've finally got over the Wc3 block that was really hampering my SC2 play, now coupled with learning how to macro better and my decent micro, I'm doing well for myself.

Be interesting tonight to put it into practice if this king of the hill goes ahead

jazzme

I play as a zerg and dont play other races in the multiplayer. I find zergs very weak defensively and on economy among the races. The terran wall is indeed the hardest strategy to break but some terrans depend on it too much that in most cases their weakness. Early on the game I create a number of zerlings and go on the choke, convert them to banelings then attack while another army of zergling is on the way. Destroy SVC and supply depots as I can. Usually the next wave will be a GG.Not very effective vs protoss becuase it takes more banelings before their pylons go down

Kirby

Zerg are a weaker race . For many reasons. It's just the way things are at the moment. Terran and Protoss are easier to play as at beginner and advanced level and have far more options open up to them with safe play.

Fundamental changes need to be made to the race. Scouting being one. I would suggest removing the timer on the changling for a start. Scanner sweep and observer/Halucinations are far superior.

Economic imbalances being another problem. Both terran and protoss can outmine zerg while simultaneously producing more units in the early game. This needs to be addressed.

Until than, just accept the fact that you will lose to alot of players of equal skill unless it's a mirror match. Try not to get too frustrated by it.

I would suggest getting an earlier than usual pool against most terran. Scout his barracks to check for reapers. If he isn't, get your natural expansion quick. If he goes reapers get 2 spine crawlers up. Thats what I do anyway. Fight them off, take your natural and tech to infestors. They work very well. Fungal growth against the inevitable MMM ball and you have Neural parasite for the thors. Couple this with banelings and you stand a good chance.

seraphimvc

the friend sent this to me

pixelburp

Funny cos it's depressingly true

NeoSlicerZ

pixelburp wrote: »

Funny cos it's depressingly true

The sheer amount of rolleyes I did while looking at that "terran counter" picture. View more streams of games on iCCup maps.