Hey guys, I'm a medium diamond player but I'm still looking for lots of improvements. Typically I will post games where I get crushed, but I find that those games are poor indicators of your true skill. So this time, I'll post games where I THINK i played near perfectly, and ask you guys to try to find any flaws and point them out. Be as BRUTAL as you can be! http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=168038 In this game, I felt that I could have been MUCH more aggressive, but I still eke out a win in the end. What's with all the banshee love going around lately? This guy controlled his banshees quite well though. Check out the medivac snipes as he moves across the map http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=168039 The Terran played well, could have had SLIGHTLY better banshee control, but the banshee play is something that I can see presenting a lot of trouble for zerg players. I really wanted to win though, so I was incredibly focused, unlike most ladder games http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=168040 This last game was the one that game me the biggest scare. Double bunker block at my ramp causes me to drop tons of zerglings and lose an overlord. I feel that I probably could have reacted better, as I glanced up quite a few times and saw like 400 minerals. Granted, I was under pressure, but I feel that keeping one's cool under pressure is very very important. And then he goes... mass reapers? Wow... havent seen that in a while. I get a lucky surround and cripple his force, move out with mutas and lings, and destroy him. Yeah any analysis and constructive criticism will be greatly appreciated. If I get some help here (unlike Teamliquid.net and starcraft2.com, those people are downies) I'll post some more replays and try to help some lower leaguers.
Hey there, mate.. I just watched your first replay and have some comments to add. There were lots of things that I loved about your playstyle, but you're not posting for them, so here's what I think you should work on and some things that I think you could have done a little better in this match: (90% of these are minor stuff, but at your level of play it's minor stuff that makes a difference) -Scouting and overlord positioning: I generally liked your overlord positioning but I think you could have improved it a bit. For example you don't need an overlord in the center of the island expo, Put it in a place to see if a CC lands but also get more vision on the in-between space. That first banshee flew just past your overlord sight. Later on you packed quite a few overlords on an island position while you could have spread them without much risk in other areas of the map to provide better vision. This together with your awsome creep spread should provide much better map control. Also scouting the ramp: When you moved those first 4 lings you needn't move them to the expo since you already had overlord vision there. Just poking up the ramp and taking a few marine shots would have revealed you that tech lab+starport being made 2 minutes earlier than you got that banshee problem and would have let you react much earlier to shut it down before it happened. Also sacrifising a ling to the ramp to get some info is generally something worth the cost to do periodically, as you played a little blindly for a part of the game. -The spire positioning seemed a little vulnerable to me. it was so far away that you'd be unable to defend it against banshees if the terran decided to poke around your expo. Since you saw the banshees come you should position that building a little inwards in your expo which would still be safe from scouting but also from banshee damage. -Since you were quite blind to the terran tech at first(which would be easy to change with those poking lings) it might have been a good idea to prepare for banshees(since it's a close-by-air map) by making an evo chamber and 2 spore crawlers just to provide stealth detection. -You could have been a little more aggressive with those mutas, but the amount of pressure you still managed to pull with them already forced the enemy T to make so many turrets around the base and waste lots of minerals which could have been spent on a mobile force. But if you had a couple more overlords at the very edge of his base(away from marine range but enough to see the edges and notice a possible turret build) you'd have an easier time noticing weak spots to send your mutas for more damage. -The second most important thing that I didn't like(the first was not poking with those lings) was using a single control group for both banelings/zerglings and mutas. These are 3 types of units that need 3 different types of control: Zerglings need to surround so move for it and then attack. Banelings need to move until they meet a wall they can a-move in for max damage which can work together with zerglings but Imo it'd be better solo and mutalisks need to fly around the edge of the army to avoid taking hits. When you moved in the enemy base you effectively sacrificed all your mutas to those turrets for nothing, while using something like 1,2,3 for 3 different groups would seem much more helpful and provide much better control. Based on your first replay I'd sum up that what you need is: -A little better zergling scouting -A little more carefully thought overlord and building positioning -Some work on control groups Things that I liked a lot: -Not overreacting(like moving your whole army to kill 1-2 banshees or making 10 spore crawlers just because you saw the threat) -Creep spread: it was awsome and with some better overlord pread it could be even better -Overall very solid play Keep in mind that these don't come from a tip-top player(I'm merely silver league and not working on it ) and that I don't play zerg at all so I only looked for stuff that I felt would help provide a strategic advantage based on my quite restricted zerg experience, but I hope it helps a little bit. I do believe that you should work on your control groups a lot, since against a very aggressive player you'd need better army control to gain an advantage to survive till you build up your econ. Also work on grouping queens in a way so that they're more accessible to control when defending. For example against those 2 banshees you lost your queens while you could have controlled them a little better let's say something like this: Have all 4 in group "2" and do something like 2-targetfire, click and move the wounded back, 2-t-click on the wounded, targetfire again and click-move the new wounded one back. Something like that would take like 2 seconds to execute and would have helped you keep 1 or maybe 2 out of the 4 of them alive(though you didn't have much transfuse energy iirc, only for 1 or 2 casts, but a better timed one on the first dead queen would have made a difference). This is just an example from which I'd get motivation to work on if I were at your level(at my level there are other stuff I need to, and with the limited amount of practice I get it's hard to get them tightly under control). Hope someone better with zerg than me adds something good here, but I hope it helped. When I'll get some time I'll give a shot on your other 2 reps. Great play overall!
Wow dude, great reply. I never get this quality type of response of other forums, hopefully some other people can review these as well. Scouting has generally been my largest crutch, and it irks me greatly as scouting is generally not that hard. My apm is not as high as it could be, I wish I had the APM to constantly spread creep, inject larva, position overlords, scout, and micro my army. I will work on that in the future!
One thing I liked about you APM is that you didn't do what most platers do and spam to artificially increase it, you just did what you needed to do and since the APM chart on the replay site recorded you spiking up to some ridiculous amounts in combat that means that you can manage these things action-wise, so only training your brain-muscle to forget less will provide the apm required for it naturally... I still haven't watched the other 2 and will prolly postpone for friday since today I was studying and tomorrow I have like 8 hours of lectures to attend Cheers, bro, glad I was able to help
Hey man, I just watched your second replay. Here's my notes: Basicly the same as before regarding overlord positioning and control groups but your ling scouting was better than the first match and your building positioning more defensive as well. Now if those lings attacked the left depot instead of the right one they'd have seen that starport, lol 3 things I have to add about this match: -Creep spread: Your bases were very well connected with creep, but since you had so many queens for air defense, you should make use of their energy and when they were doing nothing, make them spew a few tumors out and spread them alongside your attack path as well as covering possible expand locations(golds etc) with creep for both map control and denying your enemy expansions. Which leads to -Queens: you only need 1 per hatchery for larvae, so you should use your queen energy better both for creep and transfuse. If you had microed that queen with ~80 energy back and let the other one take the damage and transfused it adding another transfuse when the 3 in the back came you'd not only had saved your queens but would have been much more intimidating to the terran player seeing that he'd need much more effort to even make banshees count. -Control groups: That's where you need to put almost all of your effort: You get to box and attack a lot, and that's not optimal. You want your army to move in specific order and when you need to fall back you wanna do it fast. Having all units in 1 control group or some in no group at all severely hampers your army control. For example in your last game you a-moved your whole army in and sacrificed tons of your army. When you're in an advantageous position and you have both a higher income and the ability to produce tons of units instantly it can work like it did on both first 2 matches, but when your enemy is aggressive with expanding and building his economy and production buildings then he can also use 1-2 production cycles to make a fearsome army and push back, and those kinds of enemies will provide a much bigger challenge. On this specific match your terran opponent also played pretty badly: He stopped worker production even before saturation and was very very late to expand. He also overstreched his teching which is impossible to do over one base( you can't tech+make gas-expensive units out of one base) and was left with too low gas and unable to spend his minerals. He should have expanded much faster seeing you were also playing a macro game and do the same, since with the path he chose, he based all his hopes on those banshees and hoping you'd only have like 1 queen. When his banshee harass was shut down he didn't seem to have a plan to go on and seemed kinda lost. Edit: Just watched the last one too... Same as before in general, and nice job not going panic mode at that bunker rush and sending your units 1by1 to die... What I think that you shouldn't do as zerg, based on matches I've watched as I'm not a zerg player, is not have too much of a standing army, especially on large maps. Cross positions on Metallopolis favour zerg because of that: by gaining map control with overlord and creep spread, xelnaga towers and ling scouts, you can get a feeling of safety that way and when you see the enemy moving out of his base(2 lings below his ramp) use the time you have till he arrives to build a couple static defenses and make an army out of all your larvae, depending on what you need most... Up to that point, you can drone up and take even more expos if you see your enemy turtling and teching up. Idra does that awsomely, he expands, survives, expands, survives and at some point his production explodes violently and he overruns his enemy with a ****load of forces. Another thing about overlords: You can have them spread outside of the map's edges and have vision of incoming drops/banshees and other sneak attacks. Having them piled up is kind of a waste... Imo, if you work a bit on these things (Control groups and scouting being the top priorities) I think your game will skyrocket... Cheers again, man!
oooh you seem pretty good at this SC2-stuff... maybe even better than me! anyway i hope you can learn stuff here on this forum! cheers :3
Thanks again Stirlitz. So I watched a few replays from GSL season 3, and I find that most zergs RUSH overlord speed, getting it as soon as they get lair. I feel that if I do so as well it will boost my game greatly... against Terran, overlords with speed can run for a fairly long time against a viking, giving me time to kill it with mutas, and against Toss, the same should apply to phoenix. I find that I had much better overlord spread when I was a gold/platinum player, its just that over time fear of vikings and phoenixes have slightly put me off placing overlords all over the map. Slightly unfounded fear on my part probably.. but anyways great reviews, ill post up some more replays after I get done with my exams and projects This community is quite nice... no one posted stuff like "IIT: nothing"
IIT: nothing means "In this thread, there is nothing of worth." So after working a bit on overlord spread, I must say that multitasking well is quite hard. After the thanksgiving break I came back and was a tad out of shape, but still squeezed out a few games. I also realized that my creep spread could be MUCH better, after watching Ret play I feel inadequate -_- http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=170584 I honestly should have lost this game. Protoss players, watch this replay and shake your head in disappointment. An early void push catches me off guard, I even sac'd an overlord, but its so hard to spot the stargate if positioned in the right place. Maybe I should just pump queens vs Toss as well. My macro sucks http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=170587 In this game, I feel that I very solidly destroy a Terran on his first push, and can easily finish the game then and there, but play too passively. Luckily, I won this match, cuz he didn't tech switch to thors or anything of note, but I feel that I could have played a bit better. Better creep spread this time. http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=170588 This was the first game I played today, and as you all know, during the first game of the day one usually has lower apm, reaction time, etc etc. It was a well fought game, and the Terran for some reason decided to put his tanks in front for his first push >.< I also got lucky with my mutas popping at JUST the right time. Tips in this game will probably be for unit control and macro. If zerg didnt have banelings I'd peak 1500 minerals every game >.< I really tried to individually assign units to different control groups. I really did. Too apm intensive for me right now... 1aclick 4szzztttddv select queen v select queen v select queen v is REALLY REALLY unoptimal, but thats what my muscle memory remembers right now. Andddd for lulz http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=170590
I've been trying to reassign my bindings lately (Currently I have 1 for scout, 2/3 for ground/air or ground/caster army(if both casters and air are present I move everything 1 step further) 4{or 6 if both caster/air} for robo/stargate and tab between them, 5 for nexus, and 6-9 for extra observers) And wanna change this to: 1,2,3 : army, 4:nexus, 5:robo/stargate, 7,8,9 observers but man, in the first 2 games I tried I messed so hard. On the last replay: I almost fell on my chair laughing because I read the replay name after I watched it, lol... Didn't watch the others though since I wanted to just not think at all at that point Will do when I get some spare time
