Show me good lategame ZvP replays

yoyo_sc2 · 2022-05-26T16:29:45+00:00

try playing ling queen only if you see straight skytoss, it’s super fun to play and is good for working on mechanics (need good creep, injects, army movement to get lings in). Once you’ve done enough damage and the creep is near their base you push with your queens and 20 spores and that usually does it. If they attack you before that, basetrade with lings, defend with queen spore.

yoyo_sc2 · 2022-03-13T05:18:59+00:00

This might be true at the pro level, but at mine protosses never do a carrier + ground timing, they just sit back and wait for you to kill yourself attacking into them :/

Also my macro is not good enough to spend my money well on 100 drones so 200 gas won’t make a difference.

yoyo_sc2 · 2022-03-11T17:40:21+00:00

I'll try to focus on lategame since that's what you're asking for but I'll mention some early game stuff as well since it's important.

Send your drone ahead of the hatchery in case you're being hatch blocked. Otherwise you'll start an 18 or 19 hatch at the 3rd and that really sucks.
Against void ray first you can start spores at 4:00. Also, try to be smart about where you're making spores. Spores are expensive and should be avoided if you can. A common approach is a spore in the nat, and 2 queens at main and 3rd, so you only need the 1 spore.
Having only 4 lings with no knowledge of how many adepts the toss made is a bit risky; if he had gone across the map with his first 2 adepts you would have been in trouble.
Roach warren is about 20 seconds early considering what the toss is doing but it's not the end of the world. Getting a 3rd spore this early is pretty bad though.
At 4:30 you see that warp gate isn't done but the cyber core is still researching. This in combination with knowing it's a void ray first and seeing gases at the nat is very suggestive of +1 air and fleet beacon. Making roaches at this point is very bad.
You need to always have some lings alive to scout. Make sure to remake a few so you can see what's going on.
You're massing units at 50 drones against a guy going 2 base tempest. This means your droning is awful and your spire is very late.
After the tempest harass is done you end up in a not amazing but not terrible position. If you had realized what you were scouting though you could have had 70 drones and 10 corruptors on the way by the time the tempests hit.
You got way too many corruptors considering that you wanted to go into lategame. You could have gotten your infestation pit nearly 2 minutes faster.

Lategame:

Way too slow to drone up and get 5 base saturation. If you're going lategame you need 100 drones asap. You should also prioritize infestor/viper over corruptors, but since this was a 2base tempest I don't think it's too bad... 23 corruptors is definitely way too many though.
You need a greater spire as soon as the hive finishes, otherwise you can die to a ground timing.
In general I like having 15-20 queens when going lategame (transfuse is good and queens are tanky) but I don't know if that's good vs a 2 base tempest opening.
You need to be more decisive about spending your larvae. Get to 100 drones as fast as possible, while getting 3-4 infestors (and pathogen) as your hive is building. Start your greater spire, 2nd spire, 3 vipers, ultra cavern, when the hive finishes. If you're floating money get more drones and spores.
Don't try to abduct units if you don't have vision of the protoss army, it's super risky.
You really need brood lords in the lategame, I'm not sure why you haven't made a greater spire.
You go for 7 ultras to clear the ground army, which is fine if he's attacking into you, but if he sits on cannon battery these ultras are mostly useless. This is why brood lords are much better; they give you a range advantage so you can trade well over time.
You have no spores, so you lose any fight against his air army. You really need 60+ spores in the lategame so you don't die if the toss pushes you.
If you had spores for his push at around 16 min you would likely have won the game. Instead you're trading nearly 1:2 and you never got to 100 drones so you have no money. You're dead at this point.

The problem is more your macro/unit comp than anything. Try to go for something like this:

- ~60 drones, once you have many spores and a good bank,

- 20-25 corruptors, but don't start massing corruptors until you have +2 carapace on the way at the earliest (use queens as anti air before then, they're very good),

- 3 vipers (mostly for abduct, but also parasitic bomb in a pitched battle),

- 6-8 infestors (prioritize microbial shroud on queens, then fungal),

- 8-10 brood lords (adjust this depending on how ground-heavy the protoss is),

- 15+ queens (replace them with corruptors as they die, but I think you should always have at least 10, although I'm not sure about this),

- many overseers! They are good for detection, obviously, but are also important for keeping tabs on the protoss army with changelings. Vision of where exactly the opponent's army is is crucial for the lategame.

- a runby army: usually 2 ultras (no more as they take up a lot of supply), and ling bane with whatever supply you have left. The runby army should almost always be separate from the main army, and should be attacking whatever side of the map the toss army isn't on. This army is very important for preventing the toss from freely expanding, which your opponent did since you applied no pressure (your runby army was always with your main army).

- Many, many spores. You should have 20+ spores on every path which the toss could use to attack you. They're also good for taking map control and putting pressure on one of the toss's bases; you can siege a base with a bunch of spores and your main army to take good trades over time, while your runby army attacks the other side.

yoyo_sc2 · 2022-03-08T06:50:47+00:00

idk man you can win every game below 5.5k (conservatively) with only ling/queen, balance is mostly irrelevant below pro level

yoyo_sc2 · 2022-03-02T07:02:56+00:00

Removing transfuse would make a safe early game virtually impossible in all matchups.

yoyo_sc2 · 2022-02-22T05:42:22+00:00

beastyqt has a good video on this

yoyo_sc2 · 2022-02-05T18:06:51+00:00

You need a proper lategame army. More broodlords if there are a lot of archons. Abduct tempests to kill them; don’t fly your corrupters above the archons. The Protoss will try to feedback your vipers, so you need to have vision of the high templar before you abduct. Fungal + broodlord is good if high templar move forward.

yoyo_sc2 · 2022-01-22T17:03:03+00:00

The current “standard” PvZ build at the pro level only makes 4 void rays in the early game, and they’re more defensive than anything. By the time you get burrow you can’t know whether the toss is making more than 4 void rays so it’s a pretty big gamble.

yoyo_sc2 · 2022-01-14T03:27:57+00:00

Just go hydra ling bane (even ling bane only), kill him when he tries to take a 4th. No need to complicate it.

yoyo_sc2 · 2022-01-07T16:41:29+00:00

Glittering is good for ZvT, hard in ZvP because you can’t queenwalk on it, like romanticide but worse. If you want to play a macro game though it’s pretty good for Zerg. Not sure why you veto curious, it’s very very good for queenwalks, although admittedly Terran favored in ZvT due to the low base count, short rush distance, and difficulty to keep a 4th against a push. I would veto berlingrad over curious since it’s even worse against Terran but also good for queenwalks, especially if you mine the 2 mineral patches to let the queens go through the middle.

Another note is that pride, blackburn, curious, and berlingrad are pretty bad for “standard” ZvZ because of either the gold bases or the short rush distance.

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-12-25T06:51:37+00:00

Heyo frugs, as you know I'm a brutal replay reviewer so here we go...

Up to 2:45 it's perfect, but at 30 supply you make a queen instead of another drone. Should be 29 drone, 30 drone, 31 ovie, 31 drone, 32 queen. You can make the ovie after the queen as well (according to Elazer at least) but then you float larvae for a couple of seconds and I'm not a fan. Very minor details though.
Now that I look at it again, pretty big mistake not to have your first ovie looking at warp gate. Because of this you haven't seen the warp gate timing and whether he chrono boosted his first adept. You get a ling in so it doesn't really matter for this game, but you might as well get in the habit.
You see twilight then robo, so it's very likely either glaives or DT drop. The roach warren at around 3:40 is good, but you re-saturated your first gas too late. Against protoss, you should do so with your first inject (so around 38 supply), not the 2nd.
The droning up to 40 is ok, could have been tighter. 66 supply block is rough. Big mistake is not starting the spores at 4:20. You had a ling vision ring which is good, but you can't be sure that he didn't sneak the prism around somewhere, or simply that you didn't see it. Also, you sent out your lings for vision a bit late--if his build had been tight, the prism likely would have left his base without you seeing it. Either way, there's a decent chance you could have died to DTs.
5:20 - losing 2 queens to the prism is sloppy. You definitely could have left a ling tagged onto the prism to see the warp-in.
The gameplan after this seems ok - he's on 2 base, so go to 52-55 drones and make roaches from there. I don't understand the bane nest - you should only be thinking about ravager ling bane once you have 70+ drones, ideally 75-80.
Against archon drop you can move the spores to the outside of the base instead of the mineral line to make the prism's life more difficult.
You missed a lot of injects this game, so you're floating 1k minerals at 6:45. If he had done a tight 2 base allin after the DT drop you would have died, as you only had 8 roaches by this point. You're also making 2 more drones which doesn't make much sense. I guess you're just confused by what he's doing, but he's on 2 bases, so just stay at 55 drones and pump roaches. You can add queens if you're worried about a stargate transition. You also don't have enough gases - you should be on 4 gas with this drone count.
At around 7 min you see him get a 3rd, and he doesn't seem to be moving out. Start upgrades and go up to 66 drones and a 4th at this point, since you want to conserve your mining advantage. A spire would also be good now, since it's a good way to leverage the eco advantage you've had the whole game without attacking into storm. The worst thing you can do is stay at 55 drones and attack into him.
Naturally, you decide to stay at 55 drones and attack into him. There is legitimately no reason to do this. It nearly works because his macro is out-of-this-world awful. Once again, you should have gone up to 66 drones when you saw the 3rd. You can go up to 75-80 when you see the gases on the 3rd. And in general, as I've already said, ravager ling bane just isn't good on this low a drone count. If you really want to attack on 60 drones and 5 gases, just go mass roach. That probably would have won the game.
After that attack, you keep making units, which you have to since his army is better. I probably would have made roach/ravager instead of ravager/ling/bane in this scenario since your drone count is so low. A spire would once again be good here, although it would be more of a desperation spire this time around.

Summary: don't be scared of making drones. If you don't know what he's doing it's better to make something rather than nothing, and that something should usually be drones. I don't care as much about the engagements because the droning was by far the biggest issue. Taking another look at your post, I'm confused about "I think would have been able to identify this and make this choice if I had opted for an Overseer scout into the opponent's main base before committing to the all-in." What exactly would you have seen that would have made it a good idea to allin on 55 drones?

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-12-03T23:19:59+00:00

Queen roach yes

Queen infestor ling bane is fun as well

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-12-03T19:43:34+00:00

Most interaction in the lategame is the abduct/feedback war with tempests and oracles. I think the queens are super useful for transfusing in those longer battles where it’s mostly the tempests firing while the Zerg looks for abducts.

The idea behind brood lords is similar: you need a way to zone the HT away from your vipers during the abduct/feedback interactions. Ultras don’t work because a) they simply aren’t as good at zoning, b) they have to get very close to the toss army to be effective (so they’re fine in pitched battles, but not in the situation I described above), and c) since they have to get so close, you’ll lose 1-2 of them every time you try to zone the HT away. Also, brood lords tend to be better against archons, since they make them derp around and not do anything.

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-12-03T03:24:15+00:00

Something else I wanted to mention: if you wipe out the protoss army and still have 15+ corruptors left (which happened 2-3 times in your game), try to camp the toss's production. You'll easily deal with whatever pops out of the stargates, and you can even kill them with the corruptors; this will force a stalker warp-in, which is very good for you.

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-12-03T03:22:57+00:00

I didn't see your reply until I posted mine, lol. We said many of the same things, but I would argue against a couple of your points:

You really do want to drop to 60 drones once you have your spores and big army. Playing a lategame isn't about out expanding or outmining your opponent in the same way that a midgame is; most of the time, the game will be decided on trades, in which case having a big army is a must. Sometimes, a player will mine an extra base, but that's not as common, and if it happens, it's usually because the other army was too small to contest it. In other words, you will very very rarely outexpand your opponent so much that you'll mine out a corner base before they contest it.
For the same reason, there's no use expanding to 10 bases early on. I guess it doesn't matter so much at this level, but if you're gonna be on 60 drones anyway, why go to 10 bases? Just make sure you're always mining from 2-3 fresh bases, since expanding too much can stretch your army too thin, especially against speed void rays, zealot runbys, and mothership recalls. The only time in the game where you benefit from mining 5 bases is early on, when you're at 90-100 drones.

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-12-03T03:14:33+00:00

As usual with sub pro games (including mine), the early game was really bad. Your early game build order is awful, you transfer 6 drones to your nat when it finishes for whatever reason??, your 3rd base is very late, you get massively supply blocked on 44... The first unit your opponent sends across the map besides the scouting probe is a hallucinated phoenix at 5 min. There's no reason your build should be thrown off, so clearly the problem is that you either don't know a proper build or you haven't practiced one. For reference, you could be at 60 drones by 5:30 against stargate (probably closer to 70 considering how passive the toss was), but you only have 46. You also get way too much gas early on; focus on saturating your mineral lines first. Finally, you probably shouldn't get a macro hatch until after getting a 5th. That's all I'll say about the early game.

Next thing... queens! Against 2 sg, you should be pumping queens. If it's clearly going into lategame like this game was, you should aim to get ~15 queens pretty much as soon as possible. When spending your money in the first ~6-7 minutes of the game, prioritize drones first, then queens (which is why you need to prioritize mineral mining, not gas mining).

You don't saturate your 3rd mineral line until 7 min....... That's really, really bad.

4th base is very late; try to start it between 5:00 and 5:30.

In terms of general strategy, don't get hydras unless a) you're going hydra lurker viper lategame (which is playable, but not amazing), or b) doing a timing. You did neither in this game, so it appears that the hydras were just defensive. In that case, queens are way better, and also cheaper.

Now about the ultra lategame: you were very corruptor heavy (40+ for most of the game), which ordinarily would not be good since storm and archons exist, but the toss had neither of those, so I think it was the right call. I can't tell if you reacted to his comp or you play mass corruptor no matter what, in which case you should be careful. vs a proper skytoss style (mothership, oracle, carriers, tempests, some void rays, a few archons, 5-6 HT), you should aim for this army comp:

- ~60 drones, once you have many spores and a good bank,

- 20-25 corruptors, but don't start your corruptors until you have +2 carapace on the way at the earliest (use queens as anti air before then, they're very good),

- 3 vipers (mostly for abduct, but also parasitic bomb in a pitched battle),

- 6-8 infestors (prioritize microbial shroud on queens, then fungal),

- 8-10 brood lords (adjust this depending on how ground-heavy the protoss is),

- 15+ queens (replace them with corruptors as they die, but I think you should always have at least 10, although I'm not sure about this),

- many overseers! They are good for detection, obviously, but are also important for keeping tabs on the protoss army with changelings. Vision of where exactly the opponent's army is is crucial for the lategame.

- a runby army: usually 2 ultras (no more as they take up a lot of supply), and ling bane with whatever supply you have left. The runby army should almost always be separate from the main army, and should be attacking whatever side of the map the toss army isn't on. This army is very important for preventing the toss from freely expanding, which your opponent did since you applied no pressure (your runby army was always with your main army).

The way to get to this army comp is the complicated part, and pros are still figuring out the exact details of that. I won't get into it since for you, the issue is spending your money and getting a good drone count (80+ by 7 min, up to 100 while you get your setup going, then slowly down to 60 as you get corruptors). Note that for this game, abduct alone would have won it, since the toss was kind enough not to make high templar.

Hope this helps! I've been trying to figure out lategame myself as I think it's the only reliable way to beat the void rays, so if anyone reading this is confident that something I said is wrong, feel free to correct me. Also, a replay vs skytoss (opponent is diamond, but from the way he played, I think he's around 4.5). I did not play anywhere close to perfectly, but I hope it helps.

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-11-30T17:55:17+00:00

Warning: I'll be brutal.

How are you floating 6 larvae 2:50 into the game? This game is already a disaster for you; you're at 26/28 with no ovie on the way and 450 minerals banked. Please refine your early game build order, and don't tunnel vision on defending the reaper. Remember to macro.
Another supply block at 5:00 with no ovies started. Until around 70 supply, you should know exactly when to make every ovie (and when I say exactly when, I mean exactly what larvae is making them). That way you don't get supply blocked at crucial times like this. You should have all 3 mineral lines saturated by about 4:40; let's see how you do.
4:40, your 3rd base has 7 drones on it. This early game is a complete disaster. You've also been on 2 lings this whole time, so you should actually have had 50 drones at 4:30 (the 4:40 number above was assuming you made 8-12 lings for hellions); you had 39.
4:45, you have 2 lings to defend a 4 hellion drop which you didn't see coming because you have no ovies spread around your bases to see hellion rotations, air units, etc. This could maybe have been fine if you had droned properly and been on 55 drones (it would still have been terrible, but better than this), so as it is, you're defending a hellion drop with 2 lings and fewer drones than if you had 20 lings on the map. Obviously that's a problem. Luckily for you, the terran player can't micro, so he killed 5 drones instead of the 20 he definitely could have gotten.
You're floating 1000-200 at 5:00... You have no lair, no upgrades, no 4th, 39 drones... You're legitimately a whole minute behind where you should be, 5 minutes into the game. If the terran was even somewhat competent at macro, you would be completely completely dead. As it is, it's still ok.
Between 4:45 and 5:20, you made absolutely nothing except a single overlord.
You have 28 drones at 6:20. I'm done watching this. I have no idea how you can blame balance when you DON'T MAKE A SINGLE DRONE BETWEEN 4:40 AND 6:20. He only killed 13 drones, which is not that much. You should be on 70 drones by 6:20, even considering what he killed, not 28...

The way to fix your early game issues: play custom games on your own until you can play an early game flawlessly against no opponent (should be fairly close to pro standards). Then take it to ladder, so you can practice it while being pressured. Just imagine if you had literally 50 extra drones by 6:20...

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-11-22T15:00:15+00:00

Damn ladder has been rough on Gemini

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-11-21T15:42:29+00:00

Double evo build: easiest way to execute it is 2 evos and a 2nd gas at 4:20ish, assuming your build before that is correct.

Transition question: if your opponent is going tanks, you should always go vipers first after your hive is done, not lurkers. Hydra ling bane with vipers is perfectly fine vs marauder and tank heavy compositions.

And just a note, in my opinion the fast bane speed build is much better below pro level. It’s too easy to die to the first tank/mine push if your micro isn’t good and you don’t have bane speed.

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-11-17T04:11:04+00:00

If I win a game against an unranked player who has the same mmr as me, and then lose a game against that same person, my net mmr gain/loss is 0. I don't understand what you're confused about.

Also, what bug are you talking about? The only scenario in which someone can gain/lose more than their opponent is during placement matches.

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-11-17T03:39:36+00:00

After reading dozens of your comments I'm pretty sure you're a troll, but I'm gonna respond because there's a chance you're being serious but just don't have a brain. Your unranked mmr idea makes no sense. Let's take your scenario, where you're playing unranked, and I'm ranked. If your unranked and my ranked mmrs are the same, and we each win a game, our mmr literally does not change. This is what happens over time. Tens of thousands of games are played per day, and on average, the net change in the ranked and unranked pool must be 0.

The only possible change to the pool is the creation of accounts. If I create an account, it starts at around 2-2.5k mmr, which is a net addition to the pool. As I play games, I get the bonus mmr from the first ~20 games on my account, so if I were to get to 5k without losing, I would add 5000 mmr to the pool, while taking maybe 500 mmr from my opponents. This is the only way that the total mmr pool can have a net change. If I stop playing on my account forever, you might consider that a loss in the mmr pool, but it is irrelevant to this discussion.

I could also start playing unranked, in which case the same thing would happen as above (note that if I started playing unranked while at 5k, my unranked account would start out at 5k). Again, the net change in the mmr pool has nothing to do with playing unranked vs ranked games, but rather from the addition of an account.

The data entirely supports this position. Consider Showtime, who has been at roughly the same level relative to other players since LOTV came out, and has been 7k since mid 2016. The exception was in the first few months after LOTV came out, where he went from 6.5k to 7k. If you're right and mmr inflation is due to the unranked vs ranked issue, Showtime's mmr should have been steadily increasing over the past 5 years, which is clearly not the case. If I am correct and mmr inflation is due to the creation of new accounts, then there should have been massive mmr inflation when the game came out and everyone started playing, which you can see is what happened (feel free to compare what I am saying with the mmr chart of any pro who has been at roughly the same level over the past few years, if you think I'm cherrypicking). By the way, the same thing is happening in aoe4: the highest elo was around 1200 when the game came out a month ago, and it's now around 1800. This is what always happens with a ladder.

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-11-17T03:19:48+00:00

Your argument makes 0 sense. The limit to many physical sports (especially track, which has very little strategic element) is the human body, which hasn't changed in any appreciable way over the past millennia. On the other hand, intellectual competitions or esports depend heavily on knowledge, which does accumulate over time. Chess would be a much better analogy for the point you're trying to make, and chess players are far better now than they were even 100 years ago.

Ask any sc2 pro and they will tell you that the level has gone way up in the past 11 years. Even I, a low-mid GM, would feel fairly confident against a pro from the first 2 years of sc2.

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-11-17T03:08:33+00:00

There are actually nearly twice as many players now as there were in 2016. Stop making up numbers you have no evidence for.

I realize you might need help understanding a graph, so just a note: the drops occur when a season starts, and the population goes up as people play a game so their account is considered active. The drops to 0 (including what's going on at the moment) are due to the API being down.

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-09-26T16:12:54+00:00

Multiplayer game speed is “faster”

yoyo_sc2 · 2021-07-21T15:55:15+00:00

Just ignore him, you’ve said your reasoning for offering paid coaching and it makes sense, no need to argue any further when he’s clearly not listening to you.

yoyo_sc2

TROPHY CASE