Putting up turrets around the perimeter of your main such that a muta flock would have to fight more than one at a time, and potentially mixing a widow mine in with the turrets here and there, will shut down mutas if they don't commit to them HARD (like, upgrades + large numbers).

If you ever have specific questions about scouting Zerg I can help. The most general advice I can give for the early game is to look at gas timings and how much gas has been mined. A gasless Zerg can only make slow lings and queens, and once the Zerg does start mining gas, it tends to go to specific places:
- first 100 gas almost always ling speed unless they're doing a very funny, non-standard ZvT build
- bane nest is 50 gas, individual banes cost 25 gas per
- if they get double evos and start 1/1 that costs 250 gas
- if you see a roach warren before 6:00 that's a bit suspicious, and roaches cost 25 gas per
- lair is 100 gas

With a normal open from both sides - for me, that's 15 hatch, 15 pool, maybe ~17 gas, a reaper will get in my base right about when I'm starting to mine gas and right about as my pool and expansion are finishing. If your reaper gets there and they don't have an extractor yet, you're safer than usual. If your reaper gets there and their expansion is not even close to done, their pool is complete, they already have lings out (obv this only applies to 2 player maps and not 4 player maps where you may be later to their base than usual), they have a fair bit of gas mined - they probably did 14/14 or some similarly aggressive opening. You can see if a spawning pool is upgrading ling speed:



The one on the right is upgrading.

Yeah, seeing the Roach Warren early I can pick up on a Roach all-in. If I suspect a baneling bust or just mass speedling agression, what's teh best way to try to deal with it? Try to rush out a tank? Bunkers? Some of this probably just has to come from experience I guess.

I'm still trying to figure out what the best way to do my build is, I usually do Reaper FE, with adding Rax 2 and 3 before Factory...I reactor the first rax right after building my reaper. But as for getting the add-ons on the other two I usually just play it by ear. Lot of times I end up only getting a tech lab and leaving the 3rd one naked until I feel safe-ish. Then if I want to do a drop with stim I have that available. But if I feel way unsafe I won't add the tech lab and just get 4 marines at a time. I'm really not sure...most of the time I reach the end of the guide for the build and then it's just random buildings and random units

lol...I ****ed my video card driver up again and it's unusable...again.

Care to guess how?

I think the best way to identify a baneling all in is...
a.) a baneling nest
b.) lots of gas mined
c.) no other obvious destination for that gas (lair, roaches, evos - if a Zerg is mining gas and not advancing their tech, they're falling way behind, so it's probably an all in)

One thing to note - against bad players, it's like poker, where you can't necessarily assign them a thought process. I have for sure done my share of games against Protoss where I scout no expansion forever, stop droning at ~30 and pump out nonstop lings for the incoming 4gate, only to see them take a super late expansion and just not have all that much. But preparing for the worst is probably best, and if they're doing something stupid you can outplay them.

Are you going into hellions after the reaper? Hellions wreck any zerg all-in that doesn't involve roaches.

I probably should...I can try that vs Z from now on

I'm gonna guess, put a reactor on the Rax while a factory builds, switch it out, and then pump out 4 hellions?

I think six hellions is pretty common. Being active with those to deny creep is a huge pain in the ass for Zerg.

Yeah, I used to do 4 and now do 6. After the reactor finishes, you can start a tech lab on the rax and build a marauder for safety against roach attacks.

Or at my level, probably just use them to

A) stay safe
and
B) harass mineral lines

I actually think B) is more advanced than what I suggested. B), if done in the natural/main, is basically YOLOing your hellions (because they will die) and I think it's pretty terrible.

Fair enough

too much to read but ill play tvts if you want. can do w.e build you wanna practice against. or a range of them

Roach proxy hatch has carried me into masters!







God that build gets the haters FURIOUS

LOL that's amazing. Please post build order and tutorial.

had a migraine 3 days straight but gonna try to play some games tonight, will report back with the damage

The build order:
15 proxy hatch - send drone out at 12 supply or rally 10th drone
14 pool
17 gas - you only need 2 drones mining gas
17 overlord
roach warren when pool finishes
1 pair of lings in main to keep a potential reaper occupied, make more lings as needed to deal with reapers
queen at proxy hatch - place a creep tumor when queen finishes
if he reaper expands make one pair of lings from proxy hatch to kill scv building cc
make roaches from proxy hatch when roach warren finishes
make overlords as needed

I don't take my natural at the same time every game, but after 3rd or 4th proxy roach seems like a pretty good timing.

Focus on spreading creep to the terran natural then to terran's likely 3rd base locations. I usually get a 2nd queen from the proxy to get the creep spread going.

When choosing a proxy hatch location you want to be as close to their natural as possible without being in an area that is likely to be scouted by an scv or reaper. If scouted I always let the hatch finish anyway. Sometimes you can still get easy wins after being scouted as terrans usually underestimate the build the first time they play against it. If they bunker the proxy hatch delay your queen a little so it pops about the same time as the three roaches, you should be able to kill the bunker unless they have pulled multiple scvs to repair.

For the transition I like to skip mutas and get 3/3 ultras as fast as possible if they go bio. I typically don't make mutas in ZvT going back to WOL, although I do like to open 2 base muta on vaani. If you want to transition into the normal ling bane muta style I'm sure that's fine too.

Replays:
http://drop.sc/396719 - the game that produced the screenshots. I killed a bunch of scvs with the roaches and was able to transition comfortably.
http://drop.sc/396720 - this game the terran secures his natural pretty quickly, but I am able to fend off his bio push and drops and never let him get a 3rd base.

Not playing all that well tonight but i did hang with a plat zerg for a long time so I guess that's a plus

I'm going to try proxy hatching against toss too. I've lost almost 2/3 of my ZvP games this season so it's worth a shot.

I still don't get how protoss ever loses

I don't even know what to make anymore. I lost a game on Iron Fortress to mass thors with a few hellbats/banshees/vikings mixed in, zero tanks. I know what USED to be good against that - swarm hosts - but in a long game where I had like 7 bases and could basically do what I wanted, 3/3 roaches with constant remaxes still just couldn't take good enough trades to ever kill his army, because thors are really ****ing good. I managed one amazing engagement where I got his army fighting under blinding clouds while I had a massive concave - he still cleaned me up. I tried adding in some swarm hosts to trade more cost effectively - he just cleaned up the locusts.

The game just doesn't feel very fun right now. I hadn't played in like a week before tonight, don't really have the itch to play again anytime soon.

S A D B O Y S

Awesome build wack.

Yeah, I tried it a couple times this weekend with good results.

LotV balance update incoming, with the theme being that Blizzard are wusses:

- reapers get new ability (must be activated, has cooldown I assume) to fire grenades that do damage and knock units back, because having a fairly balanced back and forth between zerglings and reaper harass is something Blizzard can't let stand
- revert Protoss warp-in times back to HotS (still take increased damage on warp-in but units don't take longer to warp in anymore)
- cyclones can't target air, get lategame upgrade (researched at factory tech lab, unlocked at fusion core) to be able to target air again. That makes me a little happy, watching cyclones clean up early game overlords made me legit angry
- ravager nerfed HARD, weapon period doubled (aka, DPS cut in half, now only 25% better than roach) and perhaps most disappointingly, its range is reduced from 6 to 4, giving it the same range as a roach and making it just as bad against Protoss armies save for its missile thing
- swarm host changes: cost reverted to original HotS numbers (200/100, 3 supply), start with flying locusts (no more upgrade), locust health decreased from 65 -> 50, swarm hosts can burrow move at same speed as infestor

The swarm host change seems good in terms of making it more of the harassment unit that Blizz wants it to be - locusts can be killed faster by armies but the SH are now better at hitting and running. Unfortunately,
1.) making this change in LotV doesn't help their utter uselessness in HotS at all
2.) even if this change makes it into HotS it doesn't help Zerg's lack of an answer against mech

And seriously, 4 range ravagers? Picture the way that roaches run around in circles trying to get close enough to fire their short range weapons, except now with unit models that are twice as large, lol

It feels like they're grasping at straws trying to make the reaper relevant when it's basically worthless because early game lasts like 10 seconds

Also mech terran is just ******ed good in LOTV which sucks because mech terran games are just all-around AIDS

The winners' match for GSL Group B has a totally amazing game. Highly recommended.