ASL5 groups:

Shuttle/Sky/Light/Shine (11/3)
Effort/Horang2/Stork/Guemchi (13/3)
Best/Calm/Rush/Mind (18/3)
Last/Where/Snow/Mong (20/3)
Sharp/Action/Mini/Soulkey (25/3)
Sea/Pusan/Movie/Jaedong (27/3)

Flash, hero and Larva straight in to the ro16, Rain joins them after winning a playoff

lol, funny stream moment: during an ad break sOs is practicing and playing Z off stage, they have a first person camera over his shoulder watching, he finishes the game he's playing, opens Twitch, opens the ESL stream, and sees...HIMSELF, and looks over the shoulder at the camera like "oh, hi, didn't know you were there the whole time"

Goofy, the one thing I’ve been seeing a lot of in ZvT are very...diverse unit comps. What is standard? Marine tank? Bio? Bio with cyclones? Mech? I’ve been going muta ling a lot which apparently gets destroyed by liberators.

What should my lategame unit comp be? Is it still the ole either broodlord corruptor vs ultra ling debate? Or are swarm hosts/lurkers an option? I’ve been losing a lot with roach hydra comps if Terran gets to a high supply (not surprising), but how do I make the transition without dying to the Terran tier 2.5 unit pushes?

The most common thing I see in plat is probably marine tank with a thor or two if I show mutas, or typical MMM play. Heavy liberator isn't common, but if you come up against it then you should react accordingly and switch into corruptors. Widow mines are less common since the nerf where they become visible on cooldown.

Mech is also common-ish, but bio-cyclone is decidedly uncommon unless the cyclones are added to an early game rush. They're kinda like super-roaches in that they're absurdly powerful early in the game (way, way better than roaches), but scale poorly as the game goes later.

The universal and unsatisfying answer is...it depends on what their composition is. I kinda hate brood lords because of how slow they are, but against a turtle mech player it can be good to **** up their tank defenses. Vipers are pretty good in the endgame against any composition that includes tanks or thors (recently-ish I had a game against a player who massed thors at the end and wiped out two of my max armies until I finally got an amazing engage with an ultra surround against clumped up thors under blinding cloud), plus parasitic bomb is great against heavy air. Sometimes you'll see people pretending they're playing Protoss and try to mass BCs, in which case you want to get double spire upgrades going and mass corruptors.

Lurkers aren't really part of the meta but they can be an interesting choice. Adding a few in the lategame (make sure you get the lurker speed upgrade at hive tech) can make your armies harder to attack into or help you hold positions better, but they probably shouldn't be massed.

Against normal Terran compositions I think it's hard to go wrong with ultra-ling-bane - the correct counters to those are either liberators (which you can yank and/or take out with corruptors) or ghosts (which people are too bad at the game to use well at plat-dia level). Against mech I'll usually have some roaches, lots of hydras, and some vipers.

Forgot about the viper. So infestors aren't that common? I noticed that fungal appears to no longer hold units in place (is that true??)

I guess one of the issues I've always had is that roach/hydra/viper has always been super strong midgame against small to medium numbers of mech units (and bio to a lesser extent) but once they get that deathball it becomes **** (not to mention roaches are so bad to max on). But now you're sitting on 2/2 or 3/3 ranged upgrades and have to transition either into melee units or air. Only lurkers really take advantage of the $$$ you've sunk into them and otherwise you're fighting against 2/2+ mech with unupgraded crap.

Good to hear ling/ultra/corruptor is viable. I've been going that in most of my games where I don't go R/H.

TBH cyclones seem pretty bad but maybe I haven't come across someone using them well.

Fungal now slows instead of freezes units, it's still a useful ability but not common in the meta.

I wouldn't ever have a lot of roaches, just enough to tank some damage while hydras do work behind them. I guess my worry with lurkers against mech is that, obviously, tanks outrange them so it would be hard to use them effectively (I guess you'd have to use vipers to pull tanks into them?).

Heh, wait until 6 of them show up at your front door when you aren't ready for it and you'll see. Their DPS is insane (30 base, +20 more against armored) but because it's low-damage rapid-fire (and because they're somewhat large so you can't get a ton within firing range at once) they're much more useful earlier rather than later.

disruptors seem like a fun unit. almost enough to make me want to play protoss

If I could veto a matchup, it would by ZvT.

**** cyclones before 5 mins. **** tanks after 5 mins.

I probably just need to go read some Terran strat posts to figure out how to scout their base super early for the setup to 7 cyclones that show up and melt my entire army and natural in under 10 seconds. The cliff notes from Zerg advice sources is just "oh, build Ravagers." Yeah, that's fine if you're a normal Zerg player and every game involves building a roach warren. Probably just gotta suck it up and build roaches vs every Terran.

despite my earlier posts ZvT has always been by far my best matchup. now ZvP on the other hand makes me want to switch back to LoL

You guys are making we want to play again. What's a macro build for Vs each race and a couple of pathways depending on what I scout in terms of composition later? Also what are the key things to know about the newest expansion Vs HotS?

Macro opening for all matchups:

General ZvT: scout enough to figure out if they're doing bio or mech (basically, do they make multiple factories or multiple raxes) and go ling/bane against bio (add mutas, corruptors, or hydras to taste) and roach/hydra against mech (tech to vipers sooner rather than later, add corruptors if they do air things)

General ZvP:
1. Figure out if 2 base all in or 3 base all in
2. Figure out if 1 stargate or lots of stargates

Against 2 base all-ins you might not have time to tech to hydras, but otherwise hydras should be a core unit to deal damage. I usually just play simple roach-hydra, then tech up to lurkers and spire; the ultimate rage-inducing troll move is to have like 4 corruptors with overseers in your main army group, snipe all their observers, then laugh as your ~8 lurkers kill everything.

i got placed in silver and pretty much instantly promoted to gold

mostly been playing unraked ladder... facing diamond/plat guys. sometimes i face strange builds and i die to them cause ive never seen them before. my mechanics are so awful. thus far i beat all the plat guys despite being a disaster mechanically and lose to the diamond guys because of being a disaster mechanically.

so every protoss still tries to cannon rush you if you hatch first, huh?

never change

Ta goofy will try tonight.

that you just completely ignored ZvZ

Are they going forge first or throwing down a forge after gate in reaction to scouting hatch first?

I usually drone scout ZvP hoping to see a forge because it's so fun to stomp cannon rushers, but most of the time it's either 2 gates, or gate -> nexus, or gate -> core -> nexus. Cannon rushing is rare ime.

im doing well macro and micro wise but i have no clue what builds otehr people are going and keep getting surprised by random all ins

i feel like if i get 40-50 games under my belt and watch some vods i can get to a diamond level. im in gold now, but it has my mmr at plat/dia players.

i forgot how much i love/hate ling/bane zvz

a knife fight in a phone booth

the only new unit i find myself using is the ravager, which is a really good unit

im really strugging vs hellion into marine tank in zvt

plz help

Post a replay?

both, actually - though probably more of the latter (lol). though i've been seeing it a lot less frequently this weekend so maybe it was just because my MMR was somewhat low.

You should assume hellions are coming approximately every single goddamned time, so plan for those. It's usually just 4, and you should be able to tackle that harass with just your queens and a few lings. That's a micro battle to just keep drone losses down.

As far as losing games vs marine tank, this is where I'm also at in diamond. I think the right answer is just good creep spread to help you take better engagements. My later game army control is also awful.

I'm slowly catching up on IEM stuff so you don't have to!

From yesterday, here's the vod: https://player.twitch.tv/?video=v234696806
- I think the last game of Trap vs Dark (timestamp: 2:08:30) shows (basically a result spoiler)...

- Maru vs sOs was a really entertaining, action-packed series (5:16:00), recommend watching it
- For those asking about dealing with mech as Zerg, Rogue had a couple games vs TY (series starts at 9:55:00) where he dealt with mech pretty well using roach-hydra-viper (and sometimes brood lords) - I think the key for him was playing aggressively and not letting TY build up to the kind of army that counters his composition

I was about to recommend maru vs sOs. Great series

The whole ro8 is pretty good tbh