Zerg vs protoss 2gate/4gate push

Don't stalkers do additional damage to roaches because they are armored?

 

Yes, but if you look closer, there's not much of a difference. Let's see.

Stalkers' cooldown is about 1.5xxx for their attack. Roaches have cooldown of 2. So in order to compare direct dps, multiply the stalker's damage (14) with 1.333, which puts them at 18.666 damage per 2 seconds, roaches with 16 damage per 2 seconds. Now as you can see, there really isn't much of a difference. Of course 2.666 dps can make a big difference, but the cost effectiveness shown below still makes up for it. Roaches have 15 less hp than Stalkers yes, but Roaches are also 50 min cheaper and 25 gas cheaper.

If you consider 1 gas = 1 mineral (which really it isn't, since gas is more valuable than min), Roaches = 100 resource total, while a stalker = 175. Roaches are 57% of the cost.

Considering you attack head on, and run in all the way close to the stalkers ( to make up for the roach's low range ), they will tank about 1 or 2 hits from stalkers before they reach there; that is about 14 or 28 damage. So if you put every Roach at 145 hp minus 28 damage from tanking the hits, that's 117 hp vs 160 hp(including shields); 57% of 160 hp is 91.2. As you can see 117 is higher than 91.2, and these are with the less favorable conditions.

In conclusion, roaches are still more cost efficient than stalkers, and therefore more powerful in that aspect .

Basically, you can think of it like this. If you go for roaches you need the warren. Roaches have the advantage against zealots, and are about equal with Stalkers. Zerglings have the adv against Stalkers but are about equal with Zealots. However, zerglings need a lot more larvae, so therefore roaches are more efficient. Also, if they attack with a big force and clump them up to reduce surface area, your zerglings' effectiveness will severely drop xD.

Oh yes another technique I love is this... for example on LT. If you get an expo, and are about to defend, run out a wave of lings to the gold area and hide them there. When they attack with stalkers/zealots, your spines will start attacking the zealots (good thing). Then you can run the lings and flank them from behind, and kill the stalkers. This way, unless if the opponent is micro'ing well, ur lings will take care of his stalkers while your spines/queens/roaches take care of the zeals.

 

Yes, what you say makes sense. I just like to have some additional speedlings to flank the army and make a retreat difficult. I won my last 2 games against toss, in both I had to defend against an early push, I did well by making sure minerals are spent on units immediatly and building about the double amount of zerglings compared to stalkers. I even only had one spine crawler defending in one game, but I sent my 2nd queen to compensate. What I forgot in earlier games was morphing reinforcements, a 4gate push seems unstopable with the army which defends on arrival. It seems like one needs to decimate them and hold the defenses long enough until the reinforcements take out what's left of the toss army.

A must for every zerg after defending successfully, scout the area and xel naga towers for proxy pylons, almost everytime I find them all over the place.

 

What can I improve from this game?
Another fourgate push, and I lost, again... Is it micro that I'm lacking? Or did I not make enough units? building placements?

When I saw the zealots coming, I quickly made spine crawlers, and built roaches. And I saw stalkers coming along so I built some speedlings to stop the retreat. I think I should've done better micro with zerglings, as they got hit by zealots, but I'm pretty sure he was in diamond, and I'm still in Plat

Any suggestions, comments, whatever?

 

Hey saw the replay.

First of all I think one of the big problems is that it was on Kulas Ravine. Kulas is a really bad map for zerg, especially if you get the vertical positions like in that game xD.

Another note is that you started getting really high in minerals. Don't be afraid to make a second hatch in your main, preferably well hidden. That would have let you pump out a lot more units (especially zerglings) and would have helped a lot.

About the mutas, when to get mutas or hydras is pretty hard to tell. On one hand the mutas can keep the enemy at bay, while the hydras are a good defense. But in this situation, when you got Roaches, you should expect him to go Immortals and switch to Hydras. When in an unfavorable position like in that game, 1 base vs 1 base, with him going 4gate, you should go for hydras more as they are good against immortals and stalkers.

I'm guessing you might have or do have this mindset, like I do a lot too, where you feel you are losing and must do something big to catch up, like catching him off guard with Mutas, but in this case when he's 4gating, he's most likely not going to stop the pressure especially if you're only on 1 base. And cus of this, he probably still has a decent force, or enough resources to make a decent force and might still be able to win. Also it's a bit hard to expect to do damage with mutas knowing your opponent has 4 gates and can get 4 stalkers up easily to counter.

There were also some small instances of bad micro, you probably already know them. There was a couple times you tried to be aggressive and i guess tried to pick off the zealots before reinforcements came? that's fine but not with zerglings. You should just save them next time, unless you can pull them into a queen/spine. Also at around 5:00 about when your lair was almost finished, you didn't spawn larvae for a long time, idk why. And later when your first spine died, you could have transfused ( may be twice? ).

So in summary, in the order i think contributed most to the loss, is

Bad map
Bad position
No 2nd hatch, either in main or expansion (btw not sure how much you saw of the opponent, too lazy to check, but if you see him going 2gate / 4gate then you could have went for a bling bust since you didn't even opt for a 2nd hatch/expo
Was outcountered
Some mess ups in micro

He also played well, and considering the map + position he did indeed take advantage of the... advantages xD

When playing 1v1, I always ban Kulas, LT, and Desert Oasis, they're the worst maps for a Zerg.

 

okay thanks... Idk, I'm really bad with using queen somehow, I really need to practice that I'm so occupied in some other microing like units and stuff that I forget about transfuse and spawn larva.
For scouting, I knew he was gonna go for 4 gate push when he put down 2 gates and cybernetics core, and then I really didn't scout much. I should've made overseer and put down changling or something... I was just afraid that I was going to play a real defensive game and he will take the expansions and I will be starved and something. And I really don't like bling against toss, because to me it seems like they don't do much damage against such a high HP units that usually don't clutter up, unlike zerglings are MMM ball.
I should've had 2 hatchies, but then I was trying to get that 2nd expan up before he just starved me, but then the pressure kept me from actually doing so.

So yeah, all these just mushed together and I lose. Which sucks haha... I guess practice makes perfect so I'll just keep on playing, experimenting and see which is the best method to survive that.

 

Haha ok.

Oh about the blings, i mean you should just kill off his wall and run in your lings to kill all his probes, not for defense or killing his push. If he goes 2 gate then he really should only have 4 zealots max by the time you have 6 blings + roughly 20 lings, so if he does a wall off with zeals blocking 1 space then usually they're clumped up and you can kill them easy. And if he does spread them out so that the blings don't splash, you can just go for the pylon ( some players are really careful though and will have a probe in time to build a new layer right behind, but I've never seen anyone do this against me ) and run in with lings. If he does somehow stop the bust and ur lings cant get through then he should at least be supply blocked for a tiny bit, so that you can squeeze in a few extra drones and pull whatever is left of your blings/lings to defend.

Also nice about bling bust is that when your first wave comes out, you should have enough to expo while your opponent is distracted/supply blocked/dead xD