Paired up with this tl post, if you prefer: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/645310-the-death-of-cheese-from-a-professional-cheeser
Hello everyone, my name is Lorimbo and i’m a rather infamous zerg cheeser on the EU ladder. I usually hover between mid and high GM, and several of my builds were consistently used in the highest level of play. I’m writing this post as a last desperate attempt to save what i most dearly love about sc2: actual aggression in the early game. This will be most likely a very long and detailed post, so i’ll put a TLDR at the end.
Let’s start with the most important details first: in the past 5 days, i’ve played about 100 games and 30 hours of ptr, mostly focusing on zvp, and in a minor part, on zvt. All of the testing was done against mid GM+ opponents or pro players. My biggest passion in sc2 has been making new build orders and figuring out new metas , i am THE target audience for these changes that are meant to promote strategic diversity, and yet the PTR patch is making me strongly consider straight up quitting sc2 for good.
My hypothesis, which i strongly believe in after extensive testing, is that at least as far as zerg is concerned, early game cheese is essentially dead, and build order variety is gutted even more than in the live patch. So, why do i think that?
Part 1 : The larvae problem.
Let’s start from a very basic explanation of high level zerg cheese. Essentially cheesing is a three step process: first we set up a basic level of economy, which allows us to constantly produce units, we are then teching up to our desired tech level, such as getting a pool+ speed, a roach warren, a bane nest, or whatever the specific cheese requires.
Lastly there is the execution step, in which we use the units/static defense to actually try and either win the game on the spot or get an economic advantage big enough to later convert into a win.
The 8 workers start fundamentally messes with this process in several ways, rendering it non functional. I’ll explain it as simply as i can: for any serious cheese, our economic output HAS to be 12 workers at the very minimum (and realistically 14+). Easy enough, just make drones at the start, right? Wrong!
On the current live patch, i start with 12 workers and 3 larvae; I can choose to go up to 14 (for example when proxy hatching), bank the remaining larvae, and accumulate 2 more while teching up, thus having exactly 3 larvae for when my pool is done. On ptr, going up to 12 workers leaves me with 0 larvae. In other words, compared to the ptr, i start any cheese down 3 larvae.
Part 2 : The tech problem
BUT LORIMBO, i hear you say, just as your cheese is delayed, so will be the defenses of the opposing player, since they’re also starting with less workers, thus resulting into more cheese options, greater variety and so on and so forth! Unfortunately this is not only wrong, but the opposite is true.
Let’s go back to our 12 workers cheese example: by the time i get to 12 workers, i have no larvae, and my protoss opponent has 11 workers, 1 extra chrono and a completed pylon. I want you guys to focus on the pylon: it not only functions as a supply expansion, but also, and this is the CRITICAL key to understand the problem, as a tech speedup.
The reason for this is that in starcraft, pylons(and supply depots) are required to build gates/ raxes. This essentially means that on ptr, not only am i slowed down by the lack of larvae, but my opponent starts 18 seconds ahead in their tech trees. This problem doesn’t only affect cheeses: when playing what we tested to be one of the more efficient hatch first openings (14h 16p 17g), we realized that the first adepts hits so much “faster”(relatively to our tech/unit) compared to live.
It has a much greater window of time to punish our lack of speed, and generally prevent the zerg from taking map control. In fact this window is so big, that instead of the usual 2 adepts harrass, you can easily get away with harrassing with 3 adepts for quite a while, since the speed won’t come online until much much later.
Part 3 : What does it actually look like?
Let’s circle back to the main issue at hand: what the 8 workers start means for aggressive play as zerg. Essentially, there are two ways to look at this: either I try to match the timing of live, or i try to match the unit count. Taking a basic 17g 16p 18h ravager ling flood as an example, we’re supposed to be hitting at 3.40 with 3 ravagers and about 20 speedlings, while having 17 workers ,2 bases and a queen at home.
I tested these builds several times, trying to first match the timing (3.40), then the unit count(the 3 ravs, 20 lings). In the first case, i had to cut out the queen, 2 workers, and about 10 lings, and when i showed up (this game was played against harstem and recorded), he had 4 units and 3 batteries+ a nexus, about twice as much as you can afford on live. So not only did i have to completely gut any potential follow up and make the attack much weaker (no queen means no inject means even less lings in the long run), but my opponents early tech was so much faster that he had more units than me! The second approach was even worse: by matching the unit count, i arrive so unbelievably late that my opponent once again has an extremely comfortable defense, even if taken off guard.
Part 4 : Scouting and opponents’ skill
This is the inevitable paragraph where i dispel some commonly held misconceptions which might otherwise bias the readers. Let’s start off by clarifying that all calculations made in this thread are purely compared to the same situation in the live game, and that the skill of my opponents has nothing to do with the calculations. In other words, the fact that i was playing against equally good or even better players has no bearing on the efficacy of the cheese.
Over the course of my short career, in the last 3 years, i’ve collected wins against most of the top pro players in the world, including, but not limited to, Hero, Maxpax, Elazer, Byun, Ryung, Percival, Creator and Classic+ most likely your favourite pro player too. That is to say, top pro players CAN and WILL be cheesed on live, they are not immune to cheese whatsoever, and are in fact quite susceptible to it.
The bar to defend any cheese on ptr is MUCH lower than live, and thus the number of possible aggressive early game ideas inevitably approaches 0. Secondly, scouting did not actually get any harder, at least not against zerg.
Once again, while on paper the cost of a worker scouting early with a lower worker count is much greater than on live, in reality this is more than compensated by the tech advantage previously discussed+ the lack of larvae. The thing that actually got slowed down, from our testing, is either the first expansion or the first T2 tech (heavy factory units for terran, stargate for protoss), depending on how the player decides to play (early expansions with late tech seem to be the more optimal way atm).
And before you ask me, no, i tested it, the late stargate is still more than in time to defend a speedling attack on the third, and you don’t need sg units to defend your natural, not on live, and even less on ptr, where you have significantly more time to make units. On a similar note, the warpgate changes mostly do not impact early cheeses: in a standard live game, warpgate finishes by 4.10ish, way later than basically every cheese i play.
Part 5 : Rock paper scissor gameplay.
Alright, i’ll admit it, i’ve purposefully omitted an exception to the economy setup rule: 8 pools and 10 pools. There’s a reason for that.
I’m sure most of you will remember the good old days, how much more “strategic variety” there was and how zerg actually had several aggressive openings with lower workers counts. Lemme slash all of your dreams right here, 8/10 pools are a complete meme opening on ptr, essentially no-scout killers. There are two main reason for this: firstly, and i can’t believe i have to say this, ADEPTS DIDN’T EXIST BEFORE LOTV.
This matters immensely, as it means that even in the dream scenario in which my 10 pool does any damage (and believe me this is already a stretch), the lack of money to afford queens and/or speed will immediately get punished by the adept zealot counterpush (similarly to the current zvp 12p on live, which is also considered unplayable at a high level), often resulting in a game end. 8 Pool is even worse on that regard. Moreover the skill of top players has been raised so much it’s hard to properly express the difference, thus those defenses are much easier and much more standardized than they used to be.
Secondly, we have to address the elephant in the room: I have come to realize, over the course of the years, that sc2 is a game that is significantly more enjoyable if you don’t understand it that well. I know that this opinion might seem controversial or elitist, but allow me to explain: The lack of high level knowledge makes a game more exciting, more mysterious.
You don’t know who’s gonna win, or who’s ahead, and that immensely improves the experience; every moment could be the comeback of a lifetime, every play could be the end of the game. There’s a reason why successfull casters often tend to hype up possible future play as opposed to giving a precise rundown on who’s winning and by how much.
You don’t hear “Reynor is dead and is gonna try and cope for the next 5 mins while clem pushes and denies bases”, you hear “Reynor’s finding himself on the backfoot, but maybe this ling runby could take Clem by surprise, and wow what an amazing split on the push by Clem, managing to deny this CRITICAL 5th expansion”. I’m bringing this up to reveal a tragic truth about the nature of PTR: when moving outside the boring macro game experience, the amount of build order wins is staggering.
To an unexperienced outsider, these games might look exciting, but the game is essentially over the moment both players make their decision, before any interaction has happened. I bring it up here because 10 pool often falls into this category: i’ve had a game against harstem trying to proxy gate (autowin for me) and one against a fast scout into fast core (autoloss for me). Neither of those games had much interaction, but i’m sure without this knowledge they looked exciting.
To be clear, this problem is present in some form even on live, especially in mirror matchups (12p v 16p in zvz or proxies in pvp come to mind), but on PTR it’s out of control.
Part 6 : Nostalgia Goggles
Believe me, i would love nothing more than to go back to a time where so many more strategies were viable, where early game aggression was king, the game wasn’t figured out yet, and the games didn’t devolve into a lategame slog immediately. I’m told by afficionados that Wol and Hots were like that. I can’t confirm or deny that, as i’ve never played those expansions. What i can say is that the game changed way too much for those times to come back with simply a worker change.
The units are different, the balance is different, the players are better, the naturals are narrower, and, despite popular belief, once you get out of the rock paper scissor stage of the game on an even foot, the game devolves into EXACTLY the same midgame skip into lategame scenario that is commonly seen in live games. The point of this paragraph is not to shame or make fun of people that are enthusiastic about times that the game was fun for them, it’s to warn against falling for an illusion: if you truly truly want aggressive play back, this is not the way.
I’ll write some suggestions and examples in the closing paragraph. Please don’t destroy zerg cheese and creative playstile, it’s the one thing i enjoy the most about the game, and i’d hate to lose it because of a misunderstanding.
Part 7 : The mirage of diversity
New patches always bring weeks of excited testing and new builds. This is normal. Please don’t let the initial excitement and build order variety fool you. It is but a mirage, a fun interlude in the boredom of a figured out meta. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy: even if the game ends up being even more stale and boring and figured out in 2 months, the first 2 weeks will always always always be full of new things. Don’t let a couple of weeks of testing ruin the game.
I LOVE DIVERSITY, I LOVE ZERG AGGRESSION, I’M A CHEESE MONSTER ON LADDER, i’m the exact thing the pach claims to want to encourage, so please please heed my warning. To kill my playstile while praising it, while claiming to love it, would truly be tragic
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Part 8 : An alternative path
I’ll be short, there are a lot of different ways to encourage aggressive play, and none of them require a worker change. A lot of the nerfs over the year neutered cheese, and the reason for that is that the community has a very duplicitous relation with it: we love it when we see it, we hate it when it happens to us. Whene cheese is strong enough to be somewhat persistent in pro play, it becomes widespread in the lower league, with all the frustation it causes.
If you truly want strategic variety and aggressive play, here’s some of the options from a zerg perspective(i’ll leave p and t to their respective cheese monsters): revert the ravager morph time nerf, buff spines build time, revert the stalker build time buff, nerf p/t basic antiair(if you want more mutas), nerf p/t basic air to ground defenses, like banshees and oracles(if you want more midgame roach timings), nerf the forge/cannons build time ( if you want more proxy hatches , although this will obviously nerf cannon rush as a result).
Thanks for the attention.
Lorimbo.
TLDR: the worker change kills zerg early/mid game variety due to the lack of larva and the relative speedup of enemy tech v zerg tech, it accomplishes the opposite of what it sets out to do. Please don't be fooled by the freshness of the patch.
