How do you close out the game?

Platinum Zerg here. I find it increasingly diffecult to convert my advantage to a victory against terran and protoss. I often defend early harassment, expand to 5 bases with ~80 drones and maxed out +2/+2 roach hydra. Usually around 10 minutes. Then if I attack there’s a deathball of bio/tank with liberators or gateway units with colossi behind them. So I tried to wait until +3/+3 and add lurkers and vipers. Around 13 minutes if things are going well. But then I have a similar problem, I can abduct a few tanks and inch my lurkers forward, only to be met by a counterattack. Then I have to go back, and the opponent gets time to max out himself and get to a better base count.
The people I watch on youtube mostly recommend focusing on macro and getting a good economy, but I often end up losing with 10000 minerals in the bank. What do you people in diamond and higher do to convert your economical advantage to a game win?

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Hmm weird issue… Lurkers usually obliterate ground armies and steamroll the oppontent. That being said roach/hydra really isn’t a super strong late game army combo. If you’re having issues with a turtling Protoss or Terran; Swarm Hosts or Brood Lords are highly recommended. And, you’d ve surprised how effective it is to do baneling runbys (especially against Protoss) to starve them out. Make sure to distract them from the runby with, usually, a “fake” army attack. All this coming from a D1 Zerg

So there’s a couple things here. One is that it can be difficult to give exact pointers without a replay, so take it with a grain of salt – or tag in a replay. Sounds like you are headbutting one army against another, which is usually bad for the Zerg without proper flanking to maximize damage output. Ways around this would be:

-Attack where their army is not, sometimes splitting into a couple smaller armies that dodge in and out as the opponent rushes back and forth trying to reposition and keep up.

-Adding timing attacks to gain certain economical or tactical advantages is usually better than one big push when maxed. A classic is a roach/ravager push off 45 workers with roach and ling speed and +1/+1 for ranged. Follow up with ling reinforce and fall back if the losses start adding up. Often you can get some decent damage with this, but other timings exist also.

-Attack more often. Having so many resources left over if you’re maxed out means you’re not fighting as often as your economy can support. Keep trading units with good angles and flanking, and eventually add in vipers or infestors if sheer numbers aren’t enough. Also with zerg, you can afford to make a few spine crawlers and spores to reduce the worker count once you’ve maxed out, it helps with defending late game harass and getting a larger standing army. Move them to the exposed outlying bases as minerals mine out.

So you’re waiting till 10 minutes for your first attack? The problem with a lot of the YouTube sc2 personalities is that they tend to focus way too much on macro and teach people to run on a script instead of reacting to the field.

You should be looking for opportunities to attack and do damage at all points throughout the game. Notice your protoss opponent put a pylon in their wall? Time to do a bane bust. Is your opponent expanding greedily? Hit them with an early timing attack.

Standing back and waiting till 5 base maxed out at 10min is a recipe for failure with zerg because zerg doesn’t really have a death ball army. Zerg relies on waves of pressure to overwhelm. The reason you have 10000 minerals in the banks is because you are macroing really well but not spending that on army and trading. That’s the important part, trading. Since zerg can remax fastest you wanna take advantage of that.

I have the SAME EXACT problem as this guy.

So what you’re saying is… instead of being the one with 7 zealots in all my bases at once, make him feel like that…?

-evil laugh-
-laugh intensifies-
(seriously, I should be playing an aggressive ling bane vs these kinds of toss?)