I know this was touched on a little bit in the Zerg General Strategy thread but I didn't see any threads dedicated to ZvZ. A little background, I'm currently hovering between 5-10 in gold div., played Broodwar on and off for years but relatively new to non-money maps or UMS and started trying to learn how to actually play in last 6 months on maps like LT/python/etc.. (yes i'm a huge noob), and ZvZ is something I could use a lot of help with. 8 pools seem rampant on most small maps so I've switched from 13pool to 10pool/overlord/queen to defend against the early harass. I also switched from a ling>muta build to getting roach heavy early army as I was getting run over by roaches every game. If opponent goes mutas or fast expands early I try attack early w/ roaches, but am having a lot of trouble if they defend well or counter with more roaches. Curious to see strats from people who are having lots of success in ZvZ. Are people sending early drone scouts to check for 6/7/8 pool? Anyone having success with risky FE builds, speedlings/mutas? And how are you combating early roach attacks? Mirroring opponent with more roaches? Getting crawlers or lings for D and going early Mutas? thanks in advance for any input.
Just as an update, it looks like roaches are going to take up 2 population after patch 12: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=125183 Looks like I'll be going back to lings and mutas...
Lings in mass of course > roaches. Combined with a half dozen of your own roaches you will be able to put out significant damage on their army. As well as any additional help from spine crawlers and queen.
Depends on what you mean by mass. Mineral for mineral roaches are superior to lings. That and the fact banelings hurt ling heavy builds really bad. I try to get around it by abusing the fact I usually fast expand with a ling build (so the resource game is in my court) combined with using the mobility of the lings to punish the roaches as soon as they get irrevocably far enough from the other zerg's base (sort of like ling vs muta). Plus in 2v2 scenario I always have a 2nd opponent to punish in order to make use of the lings/banelings without conceding the unit superiority advantage the roach/muta player has. Increasing roach supply cost probably helped ling builds a bit, but I can't imagine it helped by enough to change their superiority.
