So I love zerg, they are absolutely fantastic fun to play but I'm considering switching races JUST because ZVZ exists. For those who don't play zerg, here's how to imagine why its a terrible match up. Now think of how you block vs zerg, you build a bunch of buildings to make sure no lings run by, now you might say that that's not necessary, especially as terran since you might be able to hold off zergs by putting marines in your mineral line or putting a bunker up around there, either way the range on marines makes them very versatile. On the protoss side, now there's a mothership core, only requirement is delaying the lings long enough for the core to gradually take them all out without any risk whatsoever.

But ZVZ your base is just always wide open, they can always swing by, you can try and block around your hatchery but zerg has very few buildings to do that with and it takes a considerable investment to do that, if you build 3 evo chambers, around your already screwed if he doesn't attack, but even if you did block, you would need ranged units to take proper advantage, and a queen is easy to take care of. Now as an add on, zerg have a finite amount of larva, zergling take 20 seconds to make, a zerg can choose to make 16-20 zerglings in 20 seconds without warning and attack you, and you have no way of scouting this in time and by definition, unless you were preparing the same attack, you will lose.Transition from macro to attack is so seamless that zergs have a terrible time, unlike other races that build units gradually, zerg has a small force going around and usually bulks up in one big swoop. So the main problem in my view as to why zerg involves so much luck is the fact that you can't block. Blocking is important for two reasons, it buys time and allows you to use crawlers and queens more effectively.

So how would you feel about the first hatchery having extra extended creep so in most maps in reaches the ramp? I think this is a very simple way of just allowing zerg to block with the pool and properly counter all-ins without requiring perfect knowledge of the enemy.

FYI, I am no pro but I am diamond ATM, though I would be masters if all these random ling pushes would stop. Not to mention how annoyed I am that every zerg player just goes muta and though I've got no problem dealing with them, its really not fun. If zvz was the only matchup I would rate sc mp a 2/10. Its absolutely terrible.

Micro and scouting intensive MU in the early game compared to others. Knowing when to drone, when to make a spine crawler, Baneling Nest and lings is extremely important because a mistake with any of those and you could be dead. Scout the opposing base with speedlings to make sure they don't have way more lings than you do, because that could mean aggression and you could die from it.

And you have to understand that ling/bane/muta is THE composition in ZvZ now.

I love ZvZ. It's exhilarating and as being in Master league, it's my most successful MU with a 55% w/l rate or so.

And blocking a ramp with a Spawning Pool makes no sense.

T'aint natural.

Use banelings, and spread your overlords for vision. Sometimes even when I get ling flooded I end up having more drones than them when it's all over and still win. My problems come when the mutas arrive, or it's a roach all in instead.

@green_incarnate:What I hate about banelings is that they are obviously slower than lings. So I hate relying on the fact that my opponent will mess up his micro. I mean I personally haven't lost more than 3 lings to a baneling in like 30 games, so I would hate to think my opponents have a similar success rate.

Place them in your mineral field if you have to. You can make a choke in your natural with evo chambers too. I'm not usually running them around the map unless I know I'm winning. Also a spine crawler works well with banes, cause it can kill the one ling trying to take out your banelings.

Every time I feel bad about ZvZ, I remind myself what PvP used to be like, and then I get over it. The only mirror match I think I could tolerate is TvT, but I don't find playing terran to be that fun so it's kind of lose lose in that way.

As for blocking the ramp, you don't really need to. Zerg expands fast enough that you should be holding at your natural's choke more often than not when the more common ling pushes start to come, and you can block that off with creep spread and evo chambers + baneling nest. If you find yourself in a situation where your natural is lost and the ramp needs to be held then you place two queens there. No need for extended hatch creep for a spawning pool block. If you're getting hit with lots of lings when you don't have a natural to hold yet then you just have to work on holding 6-10 pools. Those don't require blocking as much as they do drone micro.

When it comes to banelings, yes they're slower, but your goal isn't to chase the zerglings down. It's to zone them out. A baneling can sufficiently stop lings if you're more focused on blocking out their current path. No one in their right mind will run by banelings that are properly positioned unless they want to lose most of their lings. A spine crawler or queen can help kill the individual lings trying to snipe your banes. Make sure you know just how many banes you need though. Use your overlord spotting to know how much he's streaming out of his base, and whether or not he's morphing his own banes.

Honestly I find ling/bane stuff to be much less annoying compared to all of the mutalisk play. Losing a large chunk of mutas because I couldn't tell he had one more than me is such a pain in the ass.

Hey man I'm totally with you, I'd be masters too if I was better.

I hate playing ZvZ, partially because there is somewhat of a coin flip nature to the matchup, but mostly because I feel like that's the only matchup I play anymore. Where hath all the Terran and Protoss gone?

from watching it as a protoss player ZvZ seems pretty stable... you need to scout to see what opening they are doing but then its more or less how you go about getting to mutas and a 3rd base.

If you want a coin-flip matchup its pvp, its so random and kinda all over the place as people work out whats best and how do it certain expand builds without dying etc etc

I kinda agree, I'm no pro either, I'm only plat, but ZvZ is the scariest.

I heard someone refer to ZvZ as a knife fight. I do not like zvz it always seems to start off as ling bane then goes to ling muta then it's ling muta infester.

yeah there was a diagram on reddit or something a while back;

zvz - knife fight

pvp - coin toss

tvt - game of chess

Man I really wish I could just be decent at this game. I've tried watching tip videos and all sorts of things but my poor Terran gets crushed 8 out of 10 games. Tryin to stick with it but its gettin harder and harder each time I play.

Campaign is really great though.

Would be great if 1v1 hadn't derided into this weird turtlefest with zerg being the turtleyist instead of the rapid and aggressive race of yore; too bad. At least the campaign is solid. Around the launch of SC2 the average 1v1 match was about 13-14 minutes' now it's 22+ with the first 10 minutes rarely involving particularly aggresive engagements (see the TNT with Brad for a basic example of this at mid-level play, but it's similar in Diamond and Master as well); once you have a particularly large army the challenge of maintaining and building up a base while controlling your army is largely mitigated and thus greatly eases the burden on the average player but it also makes it boring if you're actually good at the game. I could start a game, make a forge and 2 cannons at my ramp and do nothing for the rest of the match and for about 90% of matches that would be enough to live for 15 minutes or more; ridiculous.

I think you've confused PvZ/ZvP with all of sc2

@baldgye: I'll be fair and say I haven't really tried 1v1 extensively with other races but PvT was also extremely turtle-y though in a less stifling fashion (i.e. able to force a decision in less than 20 minutes without an all-in); PvP was back and forth but if I ever won a match without expanding the person in question would always say something about "WTF CHEEZE AMG!" Seriously it's 1v1, deciding when and how to expand should be the most difficult part of the game, the second hardest part should be defending that expansion alongside attacking and preventing the opponent's expansion, but in a lot of these games the act of expanding has become a foregone conclusion. If only half of the games potential engagements of races have become shitty without somehow affecting the other 3 states then bravo, but I doubt it.

The term "One-Base" has become derisive, whereas it used to be the default functionality of a good 1v1 match; maybe 25% of the time you wind up expanding but only say 5-10% of the time you actually go all the way up the tech tree and get 200 food; but not really anymore. The larger the army the less effective unit control becomes; and while there is definitely still skill in using a large army effectively (there would be immensely more skill if you could only select 12 units, mind) there is almost none in simply setting a rally point and reinforcing via hotkeys since your base is already built up; the challenge is playing while building up.

@gamefreak9: You pretty much just need to go blind baneling nest in ZvZ. It will shut down any sort of ling aggression so easily, but you just need to have a few banes ready beforehand. I usually go Baneling Nest before Ling Speed then make 2 or 3 banes. Leave 1 in main minerals, 1 above ramp in main, then another in expansion minerals. If they go that silly mass ling build, I keep droning and win. If they don't, then play standard and you will use those blings sooner or later. Plus whenever you move out to attack, just leave 4 banes or so at home to prepare for the inevitable ling counter attack. Most of the time the player doing the counter attack will just right click to your main, then go back to microing their main army. If you have 1 or 2 banes on top of the ramp, you will blow them all up easily. When you scout early, make sure you check their larvae. If you see them stock piling a bunch of larvae, then expect an attack...if they only have a few...then they wont be.

@fredchuckdave: I wouldn't say turtley, but more as the game as advanced to a more stable point. Due to the maps and everything people have figured out, it is better to play more of a safe / standard play. If you try to do some silly all in early on and they defend it, you lose. The people who used to live off 1 base blink stalker all ins / roach timings have quit playing / changed their style since people figured out how to stop those nearly 100% of the time.

@indiefinch: What you're describing is turtling like it or not and basically just makes the "build order" section of the game 12-15 minutes long instead of 6 or 7 minutes, that part of the game is utterly unwatchable to anyone but a fanatic since little or nothing actually happens; there are tons of different things you can do with one set of resources and people definitely aren't "stopping them 100% of the time" I haven't played in 2 years and I won 7 matches in a row against diamond/master opponents. If a game evolves to 20 minutes of its own accord due to a constant offensive/counter offensive fencing match then it's fantastic (I've had about 3 such matches out of 150 or so total, 2 in WoL beta and 1 shortly after WoL launch), but just skipping that very challenging period of the game greatly simplifies and dramatically flattens the ebb and flow of the central portion of the game.

Blizzard has catered to this with nerfs to the point that some early-game units are almost useless compared to what they used to be, and I gather the slower paced audience that likes these sorts of things must be much more numerous than old veterans so I don't necessarily mind, but the illusory notion of SC2 being this height of gaming nerdiness, challenge, and supremacy is absurd.

As a protoss player I'm not really too sure what your talking about all that much... PvT can be pretty active for most of the game, though the new medivac's do force protoss to be more defensive than in Wings but you can still make pushes, and one base plays vs Terran can do alright depending on the build they choose (and you scout).

PvP is very dynamic in HotS.

ZvZ I would say is probably the least turtly match up of the mirrors (though I don't play zerg), because your constantly trying to find holes where you can poke to fuck with there economy so your mutas can be out faster or greater in number.

The worst match up kinda atm for me at least is PvZ, not because zerg is imba or anything like that, but because your forced to basically turtle as protoss because no pressure can really do much dmg without really costing you a decent amount. Your almost forced to make phonex to stop mutas and then the best way to play it out is to turtle on three bases and get your insane maxed army... but at the same time if the zerg can split the map they can use swarm hosts and force engagements the protoss can't win or then reinforce. Which makes for pretty dull games...