Lol "LOOK AT THESE SPLITS! How you gonna surround that with zerglings or hit them with banelings??" *army gets surrounded and wiped out by zerglings and banelings*
Yes, but he lost every single bane/ ling in doing so, instead of three banes to wipe out all of those marines without splits. Meanwhile he lost a base, 20ish drones, 5 queens, and 2 extractors to the reaper. He basically lost 90% of his units in 3 seconds having to rebuild it all without that third base against a 14 rax terran that had another wave ready and rallied.
@@lucifer6966 still he lost all the marines there, it's a fact -"How you gonna kill it, it's too good!" -literally kills it -well look at other stuff that happened elsewhere What? What kind of shitty defense is that? Fact is the split does not save the marines and lowko assuming that it's not gonna happen then for it to happen 5 sec later is hilarious, quite being a salty boi man
@@salvadorez8675 I watched it. Yeh, he has great moves, but something more "action-heavy" like juggling three immortals AND continuing proper macro is hindered by APM cap. Even if you don't consider unimpactful moves of human players their APM during serious fights is much bigger, Alpha has a handicap due to inability to "spike" like this
@Ander P the APM restriction was not equal to professional players' performance, it was lower. I was arguing that the bot was in worse position "physically"
ZERG LIFE IS NOTHING BUT A GENETIC MUTATION, AN ACCIDENT. YOUR LIVES ARE MEASURED IN SECONDS AND MINUTES. YOU WITHER, AND DIE. WE ARE ETERNAL. THE PINNACLE OF EVOLUTION AND EXISTENCE. BEFORE US, YOU ARE NOTHING. YOUR EXTINCTION IS INEVITABLE.
The problem with reaper grenades is that if you mismicro, you'll blow your own teeth off and then you're left to choose between a painfully awkward mech transition or bio w/o combat shields. Nice to see you cast some weird games, though. That's usually Winter's call.
@@inperangua we're talking about in and out, pokey pokey, ranged and very mobile units. The Queen is the polar opposite of that. Mutas would be the closest, as it's flying capabilities provide the same function as jet pack and blink, essentially. Reapers and stalkers, however, are more cost-effective, early game units that have greater potential for healing (reaper heal, stalker shield). You cant make 2-3 queens and rush a base and net value from it 2-3 minutes in. You cant do that with mutas either. So Zerg simply does not have this type of early-game unit; lings are the fastest, but the fragility and lack of range puts it in a different category.
@@ethanhalloran7562 requires lair, takes longer to get established than stalkers or reapers. Vulnerable to detection and slow when burrowed. Might as well go mutas, but therein lies my first point... Not to day they arent powerful, or don't have their place, it's simply further proof that Zerg doesn't hsve the same level of ranged, agile harass that the other races do.
Lowko, if you hover your mouse upon the attck icon of the unit it will mention “number of attacks: _” there you multiply the attack (damage + upgrade) * number of attacks = damage per attack. Reaper has 2, battlecruiser has 5 or 6
im pretty sure the only hyper units zerg has are muta and to a much lesser extent zerglings, protoss has the most, stalker, oracle, pheonix, even warp prism with speed, and to a lesser extent dt's with blink. How I identify hyper units, is a unit that if controlled perfectly should never die unless to another hyper unit.
@@schamarchie they don't have unlimited potential, the only micro you can do on them is chosing where they land, then they land and they attack, with little range and while being extremely slow
Thanks for another great video! It’s been great listening to all of your commentary, strategies, and break downs. Personally, I do enjoy the few moments you take to pause and go over things that happen simultaneously! Many times in your videos I also watch the mini-map and think “ah, yeah. Those infested terrains must have been attack moving while the Phoenix’s were just “moving”” I personally wouldn’t mind a pause here and there while you give us a glimpse of Runby’s, or other little tricks the players are using to get ahead
dont know if that was intentional, but throwing the granades in a way that they hit your own reapers and bounce them away from each other seems effective at preventing the zergling surrounds even more
Zergs are always on top of your reapers, so you need to throw them on top of your reapers for it to properly work even if there's a good gap, they move so fast that they can close in in the time the throwing animation is done
I'd say zerg unit with the most micro potential is the nydus worm. The worm is static but it can swallow low health units (or low energy queens), and you can technically swallow low health roaches, pull them out on the other end of the worm and burrow them to heal then bring them back full life. Obviously the worm can get sniped though. But yeah aside from that I guess zergling + baneling in a mirror matchup because being melee isn't a problem for micro when your opponent is melee too.
Muta infinite micro can only work in ZvT and maybe ZvZ. In ZvP toss can always go mass phoenix, which mutas just die to, provided simillar micro skill.
Isnt alpha star designed to have micro abilities similar to human ones ? I think I heard it is supposed to become really smart but infinite micro would be broken and not fun
@@UrGhostGaming Sort of. The initial versions had a cap on average APM, but that just meant that it would go for minutes with nearly 0 apm and then spike up into thousands whenever there was a fight. Newer versions seem to have a more realistic cap on APM/EPM.
I think you missed the era where 3 rax reaper was a legit strategy. It's not a meme. I mean, it was nerfed with the grenade nerf but it still can be used! ByuN is a legend because of what he's done with those reapers.
Very funny one. I didn't expect it to be a pro game when I saw the title :) Next time I play as Terran against a Zerg on this map I'm gonna try it even though I'm only gold as Terran.
Likely it would've just been a drain on time and resources. Roaches alone aren't going to answer mass reapers when dealing with someone who can micro super well. About all he could do was defend with queens and use ling speed to go for surrounds and maybe push an attack or two if enough survived. All this delaying until he could tech up to mutas but as lowko said repeatedly, dudes a god with reaper micro so he kept Zerg on their heels all game.
Think the zerg wasn't totally expecting him to stay with reapers for that long and was looking for a reaper end to transition to droning stage with resources, but i mean how many people think a players goal is to win with reapers. If this strat gets more use widely people will find a way to counter it more. However this wasnt something he probably was used to seeing and as it was said roaches by themselves was not the answer. maybe with roach speed but could of been dangerous diverting resources to upgrade them.
Had an old strategy before the Widow Mine invisibility nerf where I'd go half-and-half Reaper/Widow Mine with constant pressure. Transition into Thor/Mine or add on Vikings and Libs if the game started getting too long (Infestors and Lurkers are a pain in particular). It worked pretty well for a little while. Might try it again if the Mine invisibility @Armory tech goes through.
Second time watching this cast. It is an awesome analysis of a very unusual strategy. Your style and enthusiasm enriches this game to make it super awesome.
This strat has become more popular lately. If you watched the WCS Spring NA Open Qualifier, RuFF does this against MCanning in the Winner's bracket in the round of 16 (where MCanning plays Toss). It is harder to do against Zerg because Zerg simply produces units faster, but good micro (and fast +1 infantry weapons) can overcome that. The weapons upgrade is critical because this adds +2 damage per shot, and Reapers also fire quickly. So with +1 attack, you go from needing 6 reapers to 1 shot a zergling to 4 reapers. I wonder if UThermal could have snowballed quicker and had a decisive advantage in game 1 if he got reactors for his first 2 barracks from the beginning. That way, he could have started to mass marines sooner while still pumping out as many reapers as his gas would allow.
I'd personnaly compare reapers to adepts, but zerg is a lot about attrition and taking the good trade at the right moment, not so much about getting value out of units, wich would explain why they don't have an equivalent to these units. Still, we have some possible hit and run/surprise possible plays with roaches or mutas but...
Why didn't he just build a spire and pump out Mutas way earlier? Wasted so much time building a Baneline nest and expanding when he could have simply stopped this and macroed behind a Muta counter. Seems pretty obvious.
The zerg actually had the reapers surrounded a few times, most notably while jumping to high ground at his base but mismicroed and had them run away. Could have finished a good number of them off there... The zerg trickles in lings so many times...
I was thinking something similar, but as much as I love muta play, I think that would just give the terran room to take an extra base or two until mutas come out. I'd probably go nydus instead of muta and spam more queens for defense, but a few spines would definitely be useful. Heck, throw in double evo for queen upgrades and a possible hydra-lurker transition. I don't think roaches are much more than meat shields vs well microed reapers in this case, so I don't think those should be added.
I think roaches with move while burrowed could have some infinite potential, an AI could just go and burrow a roach when HP drops, move it behind the army and once the HP goes back up it gets back in combat combine that with ravager's perfectly spread corrosive bile to make it almost impossible to dodge without getting damaged
Idk dude, even though there is money on the line, it's homestory cup! You're supposed to have fun, and uThermal has a history of memeing there. If I'm not mistaken he even played as protos last year.
I'm not surprised about this build. I always thought reapers were a bit OP ever since they were changed a long time ago. Why the heck is zerg massing lings vs reapers though? Should be going sunken/queen into muta or nydus/burrow roaches (probably better due to marines working well against mutas and marauders requiring a tech bay at least). At the least he should be going banelings on the cliff (and burrow in non-cliff areas), which will bait precious scans and get reaper kills.
I'd say the Mutalisk IS the Zerg's equivalent to the Reaper and Stalker. These are mobile "little bitch units," for controlling area, scouting, picking off workers, denying expansions, and firefighting. It's just that most Protoss players tend to overdo it with the Stalkers instead of switching to real combat units, and Mutalisks can fly and thus scale better than the other two units.
I mean, not saying it's exactly the same, but roach burrow and regeneration are kind of the zerg unit to compare it to. If we're simply talking about units with mobility and regeneration. Sadly, as we know... Roaches be slow as molasses.
umm, zerg has no infinite micro unit? What about infestor? Its more of an infinite micro unit than stalkers, which have to put themselves at risk to attack. Simijarly they have swarm hosts, which continuallyproduce free units if you can keep them alive
I'm bad at this game but what was stopping him from just building roaches, queens and spines to defend and then build air or something if he never stopped building reapers?
-14 racks reaper. -You mean 14 scv then barracks, then reaper? -No, 14 barracks, 14 reapers at any given moment. -That is insane! -No, thats uThermal at his environment.
Why would he not put some reactors on the baracks? It seems like that would be more cost efficient in the long run than 14 barracks. Would the downtime kill the build?
Zerg simply counter any form of micro with abduct. Or neuro parasite. Or fungal growth. Or micro their entire army across the map and back with a nydus. Yeah in all honesty, I don't think they need any more micro potential on top of that.
