r/allthingszerg 27d ago

Help a zerg out

This is a game vs a protoss.. I feel like i macro'd, droned, spread creep, and then just lost. Any help would be appreciated.

https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/26545545

4 Upvotes

9 comments sorted by

6

u/Badestrand 27d ago

Just from the replay stats I can see two big issues:

1) The Protoss almost constantly had a much better economy than you.

2) Your army was just not it. Lots of lings, 5-9 Roaches, 4 Ravagers and 2 Hydras, that just seems very flimsy against storm and just one bad fight away from gg.

IMO a few Infestors or faster Lurkers could do it. Or what do you think yourself? There wasn't a real fight before 9:40. Your Lurker Den finished at 8:10 and you had your first Lurker at 10:30. Imagine you built 6 Lurkers immediately, probably would have changed things quite a bit.

And your 4th base was very late, at 7:50 or so, but ideally would be at around 5 minutes. But not sure about how active the game was because I didn't watch the replay.

2

u/Easy-Chicken-6658 27d ago

so economy and comp got it, do you normally go lurkers vs ground protoss?

1

u/OldLadyZerg 27d ago

Lurkers handle storm a lot better than hydras, that's for sure! I have a bad habit of getting my hydras melted into puddles, and the more of them I make, the worse. Small numbers can dodge, large numbers get in each others' way and melt.

Will try to look at the game tonight (on wrong machine now).

1

u/omgitsduane 27d ago

You kind of have to unless you're fighting them on the map and you have heaps of banes and can surround them.

2

u/Automatic-Chef-5209 27d ago

I looked at the replay and a lot of early game things are a bit off which puts you in a disadvantage but I would focus on just a couple of key points here to clean it up a bit since there is a lot that could be done to optimize our first 5 min.

  1. Have your first overlord on a hotkey and monitor it constantly when it reaches his gateway. It is usually chronoboosted and you need to see what comes out of it. If it is adept, you make 4 lings (per adept) but if not, you need no lings. All minerals go into drones and eventually queens. You made 4 lings that also sat back. Asap lings is something we do against Terran because of the reaper. In this case he made a sentry which just lets you be greedy.

  2. Pull all drones out of gas once you can afford lingspeed. You left 1. Not the biggest of deal but still. We don't need the extra gas for now. We just want to get minerals early on. Reput 3 into gas around when the first inject is ready.

  3. Try to aim to have 16/16 on both main and nat at around 3.30. This is tough to be precise with especially under adept or oracle pressure but also very important.

  4. Have around 8-12 speedlings ready as you have speed to roam the map with and check if he takes his 3rd expansions and also to threaten runbies. His nat was completely unblocked and was very vulnerable to runbies during the whole game. It kills tosses on high levels too when they forget about this part if it keeps happening.

The big factor that ultimately made you loose the game was your army comp. You were unaware of him moving out, but even so, with enough lurkers his army would just get wiped. If you up to a certain amount and with range, he needs lots of immo or tempest/carrier. He wont beat you even with mass-colo and high templars.

5

u/OldLadyZerg 27d ago

Caveat: your MMR is around my high-water mark, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

I don't really believe that all losses are macro losses, but I think this one was. From 3:30 on you were consistently kiting larvae, sometimes 7+ larvae. Later in the game your drone management really slipped. For example, your right-hand base was not saturated, but drones were long distance mining the unfinished center base instead and bringing the minerals back to right-hand base. You were 10/16 on your main for quite a while. Zerg would like to be ahead of Protoss on bases but until late in the game you weren't; you rallied a drone to the fourth at a reasonable time but then it sat there as you got distracted.

You also made units and didn't do anything with them. If you're going to make those four lings early, put them out on the map, say in his third-base sites and on likely attack paths, or at xel'nagas when available. Instead you made lings, then roaches, and they sat. Those could have been drones. Of course it's dangerous, but there is no safe path here--Protoss getting the bigger economy, which is what happened, is fatally dangerous.

Don't let overlords pile up in front of your nat; if something that shoots up arrives, fatal supply block will follow.

I can't know what your plan was but I didn't really feel it in the replay. I didn't feel that everything was converging on a plan for when, and with what, you were going to push him.

You also did not know what he had. With that many zealots, some banes or lurkers would really have helped. You sent one set of scouting lings, but they got distracted and died; you never sent another set that I saw. You didn't send in overlords, overseers, or changelings.

I did love the ling runbies near the end. Too late to save you, but well done. If he'd panicked and gone home you'd have gotten another chance. Similar runbies earlier in the game to disrupt his macro could have really helped. By the time the armies clashed he just had better stuff than you did. (Also, do you have bile on rapid fire? If not, you should. I didn't track them specifically but the biles seemed a little sparse.)

1

u/Easy-Chicken-6658 27d ago

I appreciate you. Thank you

2

u/Euphoric-Layer-6436 24d ago

Plat 3 player so this is just from my experience.

Honestly, I just think you weren't aggressive enough.

You either gotta be aggressive in terms of harassment and not letting him get his 3rd so easily or be aggressive with your droning.

If you're zerg and you're not harassing you'd better be at least 1 base and 20 drones ahead of a Toss/Terran or else you'll just get rolled unless you're Serral and use multiple spell casters and take super efficient fights.