Why is ZvP so complicated on the Zerg side?

So i’m around 5k now in both of my ZvT and ZvZ matchups. But when it comes to ZvP its always a toss up if I’ll win or not, be it a 100apm 4.2k Toss or 5k toss; its the same. I just don’t understand the concepts or how this matchup is balanced.

Nearly every single Toss I play does a 2 base pressure while expanding to a third roughly as fast as I can get my third. So now I have to stop droning off 3 hatcheries while they continue to attack and make workers. If I fail to hold the pressure (which is often, adept glaves are the most OP thing in the game), I instantly lose the game. Even if I hold the pressure they have a fully saturated third and I’m left with a half saturated third and a late fourth. Also if I do hold, I have a bunch of army units I can’t even attack with because they’ll always have a sizable army + overcharge on the other side of the map.

What the hell am I supposed to do? I just don’t get it. I can’t drone up because adept glaives and zealot 1 immortal allin are the most popular strategies I face, yet they seem to be able to do whatever the hell they want to do and still expand. Please make this make sense.

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ZvP isn’t complicated. Protoss has a scaling issue where his army strength shoots off to infinity and yours plummets to zero. The longer the game goes on the less likely you are to win. The only way to beat Protoss is to allin with queen walks, queen nydus, queen drops, and then to play the ocassional macro game but only when the protoss plays overly defensive. Then you play lurker nydus and turtle like crazy. You have to turtle because without turtling the protoss will absolutely dominate the battles. You need the support of spores and spines to win. Your win con is nydusing a critical base, or nydusing the main and killing all his production. You place a nydus at each base and unload lurkers anywhere you need to defend. If a zealot attack is headed towards an expo, you unload lurkers. If his main army attacks a location, you unload lurkers. If he plays defensive, you go for offensive nyduses with a double nydus. It’s pretty simple. Be sure to get overlord speed and hide overseers all over the place so you can nydus him anywhere.

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Bruh, youre a hard stuck diamond leaguer, the last person I want is advice from peewee herman.

Ask Neuro then. I am sure he has good advice and he is Grandmaster after all. :slight_smile:

I beat Neuro every time I play him. He has a sub 45% winrate vs Protoss so no I wont ask him.

You should write a guide. “A masters-2 guide to why everyone higher ranked than me has no clue what they are talking about.”

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Not everyone, just you. Hell, my ZvZ is 80% right now and our lifetime record is me 5 you 2. All you do is f2 and endlessly allin. You’re a trash player and the last person I’d every take advice from.

I literally never F2. I unbound it from my keyboard and anyone who is serious about getting good at SC2 should do the same. F2 is a bandaid for lack of hotkey mastery. Multipronging is the strongest tactic in the game and if you can’t use multiple hotkeys then you won’t have access to multiprong. Every game will be needlessly hard. So many games can be won by simply slipping 4 zerglings into a mineral line at just the right time. You need at least 4 army hotkeys to play modern zerg. 2 army hotkeys, 1 for queens, and 1 for nydus. You split your army into two – one to defend left, one to defend right. If he multiprongs, you are in position already. If he balls up and attacks with one big army, you flank him. If he is ever out of position, you attack the side that isn’t defended with the hotkey for that side. Anytime he decides to leave his base, you nydus. Anytime you aren’t nydusing, you set up overlords or send out changelings for the next nydus. Queens go to wherever they need to to either soak damage or heal a hatchery or spread creep.

It’s a simple formula and it’s good enough to get the modern “6k” mmr. Every 6k player is about 5300 mmr these days due to mmr deflation and that’s where I am at with this formula. I only play like twice a week so if you can get down the hotkey mastery it really isn’t hard after that. It’s easy to hit at least a 65% ZvP win-rate by doing this.

I’ve just decided to all-in Protoss every game at this point. I don’t find the lategame vs Protoss enjoyable at all.

It’s annoying, back when I played a few years ago and hit (I think?) 4.2k, I had like a 70% matchup vs Protoss, but now it’s my weakest matchup :confused:

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It may seem a number of things is wrong here! Are you making the right units?
Are you scouting when they expand?
Are you counter attacking to get value out of your units that you overproduced?
How good are you at splitting your army? Could be a mechanical problem here too!

But you mostly hold adept glaves with roaches and if you find that they are ahead in eco then, you didn’t hold it properly ! You have to micro your drones! Losing drones will cost you! The trade off is your army is much more powerful! Btw protoss has been doing those builds for a while! Its easily defendable but you may be lacking mechanically

Main problem is they have 14 range turn into 13 range.

I think all range as siege all be same range.

Reason for this you can’t produce unbrakeable wall.

On Protoss there is really no answer tempest and archon. Tempest can peg ground units and try send any air units archon toilets them.

Now if 10 range tempest air u can use brood lords against archons and corrupters and who Evers play better wins

In theory there are counters to it, it’s just hard to pull off and requires both vipers and infestors.

That’s not a counter that’s I got out skill my opponent and hope you can go around his exploit.

People have such wildly different perceptions playing this game, makes me wonder exactly what goes through their minds. I am a former 5k Terran and switched to Protoss some years ago just to do something different. I need to sweat just to barely beat Zerg who literally only hotkey their hatcheries and spam F2.

Meanwhile having like 5% of my all time games played with Zerg, having barely touched them in SC2 - I can beat those same MMR players. I remember playing a PvP against some guy a year ago, it was an absolute slug fest and close match that I lost. I then queued up with Zerg and ran into the same Protoss and ran laps around him. Despite having zero idea about any Zerg builds or concepts. I was just tech switching, attacking, harassing, in circles until he crumbled.

Mind you it’s not even my off-race. It’s my NON-race. The last time I spent an actual season playing Zerg was the first season of HotS in 2013 lmao.

It’s just such a pleasant gaming experience being able to see the entire map, and having units that are always faster so you can pick every single engagement, instead of having to teleport away or hide near a stupid duracell battery (RIP) to survive.

ZvP honestly feels like a meme match-up. It’s so freaking EZ for Zerg. Yea you can get caught off guard once in a while from a sharp all-in, but who cares.

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Same when i switched from toss to zerg. Granted the apm requirements are Higher but the sheer amount of information and Mobility and production is so insane. You feel so Safe and in Control. You have to defend the Initial harass but then in midgame you are on the drivers Seat.

This Race is legit insane that i could Play at Masters Level while Not really knowing proper builds or proper macro, beating Players that i would struggle against or lose with my Main Race. And i still have so much more room for improvement.

While its obviously Harder to Control lategame spellcasters Army against full fleshed skytoss with HT you should have so much momentum production and Power to kill the slow building Carriers with corrupters and keep the Eco of toss Low, so you actually should never face full fleshed skytoss.

the main problem is Toss design it is too simple.
toss has all the advantages better ecco/ faster tec/ safe early game/ aggressive options / scales into late game.
Another reason: Serral, all other top zerg struggle in ZvP. but because balance team thinks Serral = zerg → nerf Zerg = balance…

leave the game, chees. or play like serral 1.5x better than the toss player.
the biggest problem for casual Zerg is game knowledge.
good example: adept glaives how much commit comes from toss. what comes after? second push, skytoss/turtle, fast 4 base? what should zerg do counterattack, ecco boost, etc.?
Keyword: drones. When, how much.

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That’s pretty much the way I would put it well said. Essentially whenever I play ZvP I don’t feel any fear. I feel pretty confident and am not really blindsided by anything when I put the effort in. If they do kill me anyways because they had better micro or I didn’t macro properly, it’s whatever. They earned it.

Meanwhile playing PvZ I’m terrified. It’s gotten a lot better because I’ve focused on the match-up a lot, but there are still a lot of moments I’m just sitting in fear trying to figure out what’s going on and what’s the best decision to make. Whether it’s a 4100 noob or it’s Neuro at 5K. I can scout like crazy but it’s irrelevant if they decide to randomly cut drones and make 35 lings early game. “I decided to make all this for no reason having not scouted anything you’re doing. Guess you can’t move on the map or do anything now kek. Oh and by the way I can see everything you’re doing with my free maphack perch in the natural. I’m so skilled because the map makers colluded for this broken feature.”

I swear without Recall Protoss would literally be unplayable. It’s already a ridiculous ability and it doesn’t even feel good to use. Even WITH being able to teleport everything Protoss is struggling hahaha.

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You just gotta learn standard builds. A toss can blindly take a third off 3 oracle stargate, no scout, and defend every form of 2 base zerg cheese. From there you go triple stargate carrier and you will beat 99.9% of people on planet earth.

There are a few exceptions to this rule but you really won’t see them used until mid grandmaster. They have to copy dark’s allins and only on specific maps and they have to have perfect execution or their whole army (queens) just ends up in a stasis trap and it’s over. Protoss’ power curve is insanely steep at the 3 base mark.

To give you an example. I did a 2 base swarm host nydus build vs hyupsaiya tonight. He lost multiple bases for basically no cost on my part and his army still outscaled mine. He lost his entire main base, and he still outscaled my army. He threw away an entire army of void rays into my main vs parabomb, and still outscaled my army. Protoss’ scaling at the 3 base mark is bonkers on this patch which is why there are so many protoss in GM right now.

If you look at top 100 worldwide toss has 50% of the slots at the moment. So yeah. If you want to get GM with protoss, this is the time to do it because it’s going to get a lot harder on the next patch.

This patch hurts spores against. 5 dps but 100 loss is huge.

It doesn’t solve Zerg major problem with spors it destroy Zerg economy. It needs be cheaper and have extra range. They should buff queen air damage.not spore unless they buff it like add 25 bonus damage against mutas

DPS is increased by a factor of 4/3, and hit points are decreased by a factor of 3/4.

If air units are targeting the Spore, then the change evens out.
If air units are in range and they are not targeting the Spore, then this is a straight buff.

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