Quote:
Originally Posted by Karak
i know 0 about any of the new units from the last expansion, but it's all free now, right? ill install overnight.
Yep!
Builds you need to look out for...
ZvT: decent amount of quick-ish attacks
- rare-ish 1 base factory attacks with mass cyclone (new unit with rapid fire low damage attack, high DPS output though), if you see factory before CC then you'll probably want roaches soon
- I've heard that hellbat-ghost is a thing now but haven't really played against it
- quick liberator (new unit) opens have mostly fallen out of favor but be ready for them when you previously would have expected banshees
- marine tank pushes are kind of a thing again
As long as you don't get blindsided by something you don't expect, you'll be fine playing like you did before with ling/bane/muta vs bio - against mech, roach/hydra/viper is pretty good especially if you can focus on teching up fast and get vipers by the time you max on roach/hydra when their mech isn't super built up yet
ZvP:
- stargate openers are still the most common
- bad players like to build lots of adepts (new unit that can send a "shade" around (which can be canceled) and will teleport to the location of the shade after its timer expires, so they can travel around your bases efficiently mowing down workers) into your worker line, but adepts are low damage against non-light units and squishy vs banes or roaches so you can counter them well as long as you know when it's coming - if you see lots of gates and a twilight it's very likely to be either mass adept (their attack speed is upgraded at twilight) or some kind of charge rush
- mothership core is gone as of December update, replaced with shield battery
- for awhile archon harass from warp prism drops was en vogue but it seems to have fallen out of style
- most common followup after stargate open is robo with lots of gates, feels like immortal + gateway attacks are pretty common (not anything organized like an immo-sentry push, just a bunch of units) but sometimes will turn into colossus and/or warp prism harass
- bad players will sometimes turtle on 3 bases with heavy cannons and try to build a mass carrier army, corruptors have been buffed so you can beat it by taking lots of bases with double spire upgrades and massing corruptors
The common ZvP meta is ling-bane-hydra, which I personally hate because pros will always make compositions that counter it hard (like, immortals and archons) while the Zerg stays on it way too long, but they're good and I'm not so who knows.
You can definitely get to at least diamond by just playing the same you did in HotS as long as you get used to the new units and understand what rushes and compositions you need to look out for. And I guess the other hard thing is getting used to opening timings with the new worker thing (you start with 12 workers, not 6). My standard opening in all matchups if I'm not doing something cheesy is...
14 overlord
14 extractor trick
15 2x drone, rally one to natural
17 drone
18 hatch
17 drone
18 gas
17 drone
18 pool
In ZvP I'll just crank out drones and defend with queens (be careful if they open 2 gate before nexus though, probably means lots of adepts coming soon), in ZvT I'll make an overlord at 20 and pause and make 6 lings when pool finishes to have units to greet a reaper
I guess it's also worth noting that I get cannon rushed occasionally but otherwise proxy cheese is super super rare now