Hokay, Finally finished 1/3 of the article I am trying to do: LOTV:ZvsZ - RT pls

These are my first impressions regarding LotV ZvZ, the full article will be posted on ROOT's website when I get to finishing it, took me a couple days to finish the first 3rd of it, but I think I covered most of what I wanted to cover now, please do note these are my first impressions, educated guesses and opinions, and aren't necessarily close to 100% accurate :

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ZvZ:



Openers in zvz should be similar to HotS EXCEPT I think openers that lead to early muta will be weaker, especially early in the game while we figure out openers - this is because the muta is normally used as a harassment and map control tool. (1)



Of course there will be opportunities to make units like Muta on larger maps, and perhaps if you are able to scout your opponent with lings and determine their opener is very passive and you feel comfortable making those cuts.



This should make Ling and Roach openers common, and the most common transition we're likely to see is Ravager+Ling into Roach+Ravager, tho because of how frequent engagements happen, there may be little room to transition at all. Don't be bored by this however as the meta is established and figured out we'll counter the meta, making for interesting and dynamic games.



Lings are as good as they've always been, and with Ravager support, they can create really awkward engagements in the match-up, even in Roach Ravager vs Ling Ravager, the later should come out on top at least in the earlier portions of the game - this is simply because the roaches attack the lings while ravagers both shoot and throw corrosive bile on top of the roach ravager Army. Roaches are buffed already - we don't need to research Tunneling Claws anymore, and they move faster while burrowed, this could matter a lot in ZvZ - we already liked making roaches in the match-up, and in a game where trades are more common and necessary than ever, Roach-Ravager should be a staple in the mid game.



The Ravager should be very versatile, holding ramps and positions defensively and delaying your opponent / stalling are things that the ravager excells at - however, the reason you really need the unit is the actual fight. Corrosive bile during the fight is nuts and absolutely necessary, if one player has ravagers and the other one doesn't in a large fight - the person with ravagers should always come ahead of the person with just roaches, or even roach hydra and perhaps even roach hydra infestor - tho the later unit composition might be able to kite better once there is a forced engagement ravagers *should* come out ahead.



Corrosive Bile does a lot of damage, so standing your ground will hurt A LOT during the fight - microing against it will hurt just as much! This is of course because when you micro units back and move them from the front line, the army that has the ravagers and doesn't need to move their units back or spread them out will have more units attacking in the front line, killing the enemy units at a faster rate and snowballing with numbers from there.



Roach+Baneling might be a more even match-up vs the ravager roach composition - but you can always try to go for less ravagers and some infestors if you suspect that's what your opponent is doing or of maybe even add your own banelings. On top of that, the transitions into ravagers are very clean while other alternatives are harder to get to (2) This is actually a huge "indirect" change because of the way the economy works in this game, there's a few of these "indirect changes, so please go check out the notes at the end when you're done reading this.



Ultras are also insane with their new armor upgrade, so it's hard to count them out, upgraded ling timings should be pretty decent regardless, and a transition into the armored elephants from there could just end games, however it is also a tedious transition (2).



Lurkers? idk about lurkers... I struggle to find a place for them until the 'late game' in most match-ups ZvZ included and traditional 'late game' isn't something that we'll see as often in LotV, this is because, once again... it is a very hard unit to transition into (2) (Lair>Hydra Den> Lurker Den> Hive > Range Upgrade + you need to morph the Hydras into lurkers).



Overlord scouting in ZvZ even against a hatch first should be very difficult, as queens are faster to pop up, of course this doesn't cause any major trouble in the match-up balance-wise since it's still a mirror, but scouting units in general received an indirect nerf in LotV (3) With the ravager being a staple unit in the match-up, we'll also have to look out for our ovies around the map, without speed it's very easy to 4-shot an overlord with corrosive bile, likely overlord speed, and if your hands can handle it - patrolling a small area with each overlord - might be the way to go as the game progresses.



I'll finally go into predictions and options to counter an unexisting/barely-existing meta, this is of course, and even more-so than before speculation and opinion, I may be completely wrong!



- Ravager Ling > this should be a scary starting point in terms of unit comp, this ofc doesn't mean that we won't see Ling + bane, but Ravager Ling is where you're likely headed to by default atm. We'll use this as our starting point. Lets assume tons of people are going ravager ling. Staying on ling bane if you were already there may not be a bad idea, adding your own roaches and ravagers - is also not the worst idea - you will have less gas for ravagers but banelings counter lings preeeeeeeeetty hard, so you should be more than fine there, and ling count should be crucial in this type of engagement.



Now if you open with a later gas, a greedier opener, you may have to try to identify Ravager Ling compositions and drop a baneling nest of your own, even if you weren't planning on going ling speed. As the game progresses Roach Ravager should scale up better than Roach Ling, so start heading there when you can, I've died a few times trying to take too many short cuts to what I believe to currently be the stronger composition.



Alternatively, upgraded lings, should be a great answer to the meta, whichever way it's headed. Very Early Carapace will be great in ling bane vs ling bane as usual, and a very early +1 meelee could be fantastic against roaches, going +1 ling or ling bane vs ravager ling timings should be sick good. And something that I have in mind but haven't had a chance to test yet, would be a transition from that into a ling swarmhost timing attack, swarmhosts are great for timings now in my opinion, they are one of the worst and most unreliable units defensively, but aggressively they can be good, and for harassment, esp in zvp, they are amazing.



If you're wondering why we're not talking about adding hydras and infestors as much, it's simply because they are units that require additional transitions (2) from a unit composition that is very strong as it is. Gas is also a huge limiting factor for Zerg now more than ever, it's cool cause it forces out more bases from us - but it also means that our armys might be more 1-dimensional especially with how strong these earlier new tools are, of course that is perfectly fine, and if anything as far as design goes - it's more swarmy, but it does make me a bit sad that it'll be harder to have variety. I want to stress one more time, I think you'll be able to use transitions (2) to secure games where you already had a lead, especially as we figure out the game more and find out which unit compositions would be ideal if we could build anything without getting punished, it's there where lurkers, and maybe even broods could have a shot of making it into some higher level games.





NOTES:



(1)

(Light-harrassment units in LotV are in my opinion weaker, because opponent's economy is larger faster and in order to get them in time for them to be relevant and execute jobs like slow down your opponent's economy, get you map control or stop a base - you may need to make some economy cuts or take risks yourself, such as for example cutting a queen in order to make a faster lair).



(2)

Transitions are MUCH more difficult in LotV because of the frequency of the trades, this means you may very well die or lose a base, directly or indirectly while trying to transition safely into something else, the more tedious the transition, the weaker the unit becomes because of the timings the transition opens up for your opponent. As we learn the game however, we might use transitions to *secure* leads in games for example.



(3)

Scouting is difficult, especially with overlords, this is because of the economy changes - The speed in which you get units out is greatly increased, but the map length and overlord speed hasn't changed. It seems to me that it could have been something that was overlooked - however it may not necessarily be game breaking, if I had one change to suggest, it would be to make overlord speed 50/50 instead of 100/100 and also buff the Reapers and Adepts respectively.

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