People keep telling me roaches are great in ZvT. As the meme master who can beat GM terrans with mass infestors, I decided to put this to the test:
Roaches attempt to defend a 2 base allin vs a Masters-1 terran:
Zerglings attempt to defend a 2 base allin vs a Grandmaster terran:
These games are very similar. A zerg with a third base tries to defend a 2 base allin from the terran. Roaches can’t handle simple problems within the game, such as avoiding being trapped. 2 gas zergling baneling with mass queen and a fast lair can defend any terran allin with ease and has potent counter-attack potential the moment baneling speed finishes.
High mobility, low supply cost, short production time, splash damage and burst damage are all features that ling bane have that roaches lack, which is why roaches are dumpster tier units. Anyone who masses roaches could probably gain +500 mmr or more if they just switched to using real units.
roaches can be good, it just depends on how you use them just like any other unit in the game. There better for early game defence and taking fire while lings chew away at the other army, but this really only works with marines, once you ad marauders they become pointless. Now if say the oppenent forgets to build detection and you catch that, the tunnel burrow ability is a great way to capitalize on there screw up. They are also great for taking bane shots in zvz, and do pretty well against lings all by them selves. As for toss, there alright against zealots but stalkers just eat them alive. Honestly i was playing roaches for a good part of last season on 2v2 and had alot of success to the point where everyone that played against me started preping for them (as well as other zergs trying to copy what i was doing), which if i seen it coming i would fake them out and let them see the roach warren and come out with mutas or something else and really f with there heads. But like i said it just all depens on how you use the roachs.
The high supply cost, lack of burst and splash damage, and low mobility make it virtually impossible to find a situation where they are useful that also wouldn’t be better to just use ling bane.
That’s absolutely false. Roach defenses crumble to medivac harass, to basic tank pushes, and even mass bio builds beat roaches. Ling bane absolutely crushes every single one of these. The roaches just aren’t fast enough to flank, nor to converge on tanks, nor to chase down medivacs as they run all over. They don’t have the burst damage to punch through medivac healing. Roaches are pure garbage.
Terran has scans. He can summon detection anywhere on the map.
I played 5 games recently vs the “roach master” in Grandmaster, aka Snake, and I won all 5 of them with ling builds. Who is this guy? He’s famous for doing roach builds at the 6k mmr level. That’s pretty darn high, so why is he being crushed by ling builds? Because roaches are steaming hot garbage. They were games that were totally impossible to win, but the roaches found a way to lose because they are dumpster tier units. In one of the games, he reduced me to 1 base vs his 3 base and he still lost.
It always boils down to one of the issues I mentioned above. In this case, roaches don’t have the mobility for map control vs a muta player, so a muta player that is reduced to 1 base is safe to simply expand twice while having total map control. This is only true if you have a sufficient amount of mutas to DPS the roaches down, but that’s always true just due to how timings work out for builds. In a similar situation vs a 1/1 ling build, the lings can run across the map and kill two bases before the mutas even get back home. Even if the mutas are literally standing over top of the base, the lings can kill all the drones before dying themselves.
Video 1 Batz fails to mention he did a PROXY hatchery at the start, failed to cancel putting him behind , and tries to flee ranged units through a slow zone, and didn’t even GG at the end. was on equal worker count and bases against a terran with mules. Snorkeljuice outplayed you hard. You didn’t get your third base until like 5 minutes, it was barely up at the time the push came at which point you lost half your roaches in a slow zone to which you were already down 10 army supply with your already inflated food count. You had no right defending that push being that far behind. Snake can win zvz against 6k zergs, but he is mostly hovering around 5.1k so he is for sure on the bottom scale of GM.
Also Stefano, defended successfully like 180+ supply of Terran push with tank marine banshee, defending with Burrow move roaches , queens , ravagers, and still harassing with roaches at 500+ average apm. Skill Issue.
Ah man nobody replied. Oh well. Anyway, I saw this video on YouTube which is a good demonstration of my point. Gumiho beats Serral in game 1 because Serral was dumb enough to go for roaches:
Let’s break this BS down a bit. Gumiho fights up a ramp into biles and eats tons of fungals, but wins anyway because roaches are literal trash. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying Zerg is underpowered, but I am saying anyone with a brain makes ling bane and not roaches.
The only reason to make a roach is so that you have have a few ravagers to bile down liberators or tanks. Roaches themselves are dumpster tier units – literally their only purpose in existence is to troll low MMR terrans on the ladder.
It’s hilarious that games like this one between Gumiho and Serral exist and internet clowns will still tell you WITH A STRAIGHT FACE that roaches are good units.
not a good example at all though. gumiho has better upgrades, at least as much supply as serral in that fight and no one denies the dps of a big enough bio ball surpasses zerg dps without burst by banelings. serral just finished his hive at 14mins btw if I saw that correctly
should check out SERRAL’s 1-1 lurker timing, goes into roaches, gets 1-1 , but has lurkers by 10 minutes off a 5 minute infestation pit . PIG was testing roaches off a 15 hatch,15 overlord, 15 pool build with 1 minute 20-30 gas.
Roaches are really simple to understand. Their power curve peaks when a terran tries to establish a third, and very rapidly falls off. You can hit really powerful timings, but if your build is delayed even a millisecond you will miss those timings. The problem is that terran has a billion ways to stall a timing. Something as simple as a single liberator or a hellion runby can completely screw up a zerg’s timings.
After those timings are missed, roaches go from being strong to being worth negative value – they are literally worse than worthless and take up tons of supply. If you make defensive roaches, you always want to trade them out to free up supply. If you don’t do that, you die. Their supply cost is simply insane for how useless they are as units. So if you have 12 roaches in your army, you are toast. That’s the equivalent of ~50 banelings that you have stuck in wasted supply. What’s better: 12 roaches or 50 banelings? Anyone who says the roach is better needs to get an MRI done to see what’s wrong with their brain, because I guarantee there is something big going on between their ears.
This is one of the reasons why I always crack up when someone says the pro scene has never been more competitive. Like, what! Top zerg players mass roaches and even when they go ling bane they will still have roaches in their army. These people don’t understand basics of the game that were well understood during HotS days. Pro play has drastically regressed since the Kespa scandal. Pro players these days are junk. They are awful at SC2.
Serral is like running around with 10 supply wasted in roaches and people are like “OMG, is he the GOAT?”.
Side note: internet clowns are all telling me I am not 6k meanwhile they are saying massing roaches is a good strat. It’s like, pick a lane, sweetheart. You can’t understand 6k mmr level gameplay, CLEARLY, because you don’t even understand unit comps, but you think you can tell someone who is that level that they don’t know what they are talking about? Give me a break. The moment you say roaches are good, you lose all credibility to assess someone else’s skill level.
I can clearly assess your skill level by literally watching a replay from you and your match history and your MMR. You don’t GG and you fail to acknowledge how entire matches play out and cherry pick moments . You get out played by 4.2k terrans.
You keep posting over and over and over again, about Snake being 6k when he is 1000 mmr lower , he gets to 5.3k or such on some days but loses 200 mmr the next day. He is not a 6k player. Come back crying your garbage theories when you can consistently beat UKKO or Future, Hateme,Scarlett,Trigger etc
The one thing you overlooked was that it’s a meme account so the builds are supposed to be as outrageously bad as possible. The fact that I can get to GM with dumpster builds proves you are wrong. Anyone with eyes can see it. Even playing the strongest builds in the game, the probability that any rando can beat a 6k mmr player like JimRising is 0.0% unless that person is the same skill level. Add in the fact that it’s obviously a troll build meant to style on the guy, and you can be 100% certain of the skill level. But, you still doubt it. I can’t fix blindness, man. You legit need to see an eye doctor. The problem isn’t my skill level. The problem here is that you are blind.
I know this is really hard for you to understand, but getting into GM is very hard, and it’s a thousand times harder when you handicap yourself with meme builds. It’s not rocket science, kid. Go ahead. Give it a try. Post 1 replay where you beat a 6k mmr player with mass slow lings. Such a game doesn’t exist. I am the only person on the planet skilled enough to pull that off. I own the only replay in existence where a 6k zerg player loses to mass slow lings. Those are the facts, and I have many more examples than just that one. All you have to do is use you eyes.
It isn’t a meme account dude. your game level and sense is equally a meme.
You lost to Snorkeljuice because you didn’t cancel your Proxy, didn’t get your third base until 5 minutes, were on equal workers vs mules, were down 10 army supply with inflated roaches, got half them trapped and killed by rocks, and had insufficient larva to hold a 2 base push. And didn’t GG. BUT NO ROACHES SUCK REEE ITS A MEME REEE. You can’t just make a post and say " this 4.6k terran out played me hard dude he did good ". Always excuses.
That is why he is getting praise from other players and you are complaining to the same 4 guys over and over again on a dead forum.
No , he just has lower level mechanics alt account.
OH ITS FUN TO NOT CANCEL my proxy. i was having fun making dozens of mistakes in a 9 minute game. Snorkel made some of his own errors too, it is what happens, the lower the league the more mistakes, the less mistakes, the higher you climb the ladder, its that simple.
