2023 Zerg Bronze to GM #4: Diamond 3 - Learn Stronger Opening for Diamond (B2GM) | StarCraft 2

[@Bigboodydoop19]

PiG is actually a GOAT. I just found starcraft again after a 10 year leave. I forgot how much I love this game and I’m so happy to see it has evolved to where it is now. The gameplay and mastery is just insane. And watching pig videos helps so much. SC2 FOREVER

[@PiGCoaching]

Thnx mate!

[@galaxygolden]

Huuuge! I played a lot of SC1 Let SC2 go for a while after wings of liberty : / Excited to be back as well!

[@Gitalien1]

Welcome back fellows. I never stopped, 2 kids, wife, full time job. I play few games a month, but still there. Count on these vids to help me improve my gameplay. Am stuck in D2 1v1 (M3 in multi).

[@adamsmith9461]

Love your post! I came back for StarCraft since last login 10 years ago. These videos are extremely useful!

[@Chris-ok7cz]

Really hoping for another Terran B2GM, you have such a way with teaching and explaining your actions. Happily climbed from G3 to P2 after finishing the series. Really wanting to see platinum played with bio as it's my specialty but I'm struggling. Keep up the great work!

[@PiGCasts]

on the way after this one!

[@bradwick7683]

I've been waiting patiently for this for weeks, can't wait to watch! Hope you enjoyed your vacay!

[@VJLin]

Haha. Same here

[@xareledan]

Welcome back, great episode! Question: In the outro you ask which tech choice (Hydra/Infestor/Muta) we want to see added to the ling/bane composition. In the case of Hydralisks, what factors play a role in how you order your evolution chamber upgrades (melee/missile/carapace)? Do we stay on two evo chambers or go to three evo chambers? What order do we get the upgrades in if we are playing up towards 3/3/3 out of evo and/or 3/3 out of spire? If you or anyone else can explain to me how to prioritize the upgrades when mixing melee and ranged units I'd appreciate it. I understand that there are a ton of variables at play, so I am interested in understanding more about the why of it in order to be able to make my own decisions later on based on the state of the game. Cheers, AlSikandar

[@PiGCasts]

triple evo is pretty rare, normally just double. It all depends on the matchup and how hard you're committing. We'll still be sticking to MASS ling bane to start and the hydras, infestors or mutas will just be a next step in a mostly supporting role. In ZvP mutas could be used as a huge swap to surprise and win the game with a basetrade. Generally In ZvT you'd go 2-2 melee carapace, then go +1 range and + 3 carapace. At this point +1 is SO much cheaper and faster to upgrade than +3 melee. AND you've actually got say 15 hydras in your army, whereas earlier there were none, and then only 5-10 at most. If you were playing some whacky mass hydra style, you'd go range and carapace of course. In ZvP carapace isn't very important for most interactions. The protoss tend to do massive damage so +1 armour doesn't help and it's more an arms race to destroy them before they destroy us. So you'd go melee and range upgrades as the priority, carapace as the lowest priority. In ZvZ, roach vs roach attack is +2 damage, armour only stops 1 of that damage. So of course attack is better. However when vsing mutas they do a bounce damage that bounces twice for 33% on each bounce. So 9 damage direct hit, then 3 damage, then 1 damage. An armour upgrade effects all of these to drop it by 2.5 total damage and therefore is massive. So armour is actually generally more important for roach hydra vs mutaling. Exception being that having a +1 range attack upgrade is HUGE for roach vs ling because they go from 3 shots to 2-shots. But if they have a carapace it cancels that and makes no difference. But if you have +2 range then they'd need +3 carapace (very unlikely to ever happen in ZvZ) to have any impact. Side note - minimum damage is 0.5 - so that last muta bounce would still never go below 0.5 damage.

[@juandibernardo2742]

Yes!!! Good news, PiG uploads new episode!!! Bad news, it’s only 3 hours…

[@eveechoes5024]

Thanks. For your work, your advices and for making me a better SC2 player each time I watch your video. Cheers mate 🙏

[@xXGyakusatsuXx]

19:16 this! i got a deja vû from yesterday. played toss. got cheesed hardcore, i just focused then to really saturate my 2 bases, hold the wall, do my 2base build, since i can't really move out. scoutet with observer earlier, that he's still 1base. and then i had so incredible much army, i could nearly just a-move and win. i did just a tiny bit of micro, here and there, and this was enough. i was pleasently surprised, how easy it was, after the cheese armys got crushed

[@Cyrex-ft8hb]

Another way to counter widowmines is to shift deselect single lings and send them towards the enemy army to scout for mines. Note: it requires more apm

[@MenzeL7]

Amazing video. I just returned to StarCraft after 10 years and love to play it again. I hated the swarm host meta back in the day

[@maneljuanola]

Thanks for the effort!! Really entertaining and instructive!!

[@PiGCoaching]

Thanks Manel

[@Ethernet480]

Glad to have found your videos…I haven’t played StarCraft in maybe 7 years but it makes me want to play again. I think what made me lose interest is that I was a Zerg and Terran player but absolutely loathed mirror matchups, especially ZvZ.

[@strongerandwiser2023]

Is it just me or is terran an absolute nightmare to deal with once you pass diamond and T players start to know what they are doing. The other races aint so bad but terran... 25% win rate for me. 65% toss and 64% zerg.... Something aint right!

[@PiGCasts]

ZvT is a mechanical matchup where there's a lot of tempo and momentum. Once you learn to do more runbys and things to put that APM load back on your opponent the matchup will feel far better. Also once you get better with creep spread, overlord placement and general macro systems to keep that money spending, the matchup will start to click. On the road there though except to get thrown off by the terran aggression quite a bit. Just keep systematically programming those responses to each thing that throws you off and it'll start to be like tying your shoelaces eventually. Alternately just check the builds I did in masters in my last B2GM on my other channel and win with some easy roach timings and stuff like that lol!

[@strongerandwiser2023]

@@PiGCasts Thanks mate. Ive gone from Plat 2 to Diamond 2 in the space of 2 weeks... Vids have been great. Cheers!

[@dope4500]

I'm diamond 1 and my win rate with terran is 60percent vs every race but as zerg and protoss I'm diamond 2 and it's 30 vs terran as either I know exactly wym it's really when they start getting good with ghost as I didn't get out of diamond 3 until I got good with ghost.

[@alptug]

It honestly crazy sometimes when i was actually tying my shoelaces 53:30 pig says it like tying your shoe laces. Coincidence i don’t think so😂

[@davidas5049]

hahaha to the window to the wall, fantastic! thanks m8!

[@freekvandenberg9772]

Great work Master PiG!

[@PiGCoaching]

Cheers mate, much appreciated! :D

[@julzp424]

Yessss your back!!!!

[@blaskbulwark2881]

Amazing educational work Pig! I appreciate it. Spore twenty blaze it!

[@hamburgers7817]

Hey I play Hyper One on the ladder all the time! Hey there mate your YT famous now 😊

[@emmanuelisaacdmagcawas6708]

I'm beating diamond asses in the unranked because of this strat thank you PiG for this, 8/10 for the daily wins Im excited for the ladder!!

[@jeremyjones6219]

first off thanks for the b2gm. something ive noticed in your videos is a high pitched audio every once in awhile

[@michaellandgren549]

This is really good stuff.

[@TheBluzzer]

Thanks man... learning a lot from you!

[@PiGCoaching]

Thanks mate! Much appreciated

[@janjoghurt8797]

Hey Pig! I hope you enjoyed your holidays! I watched lots of educational gaming content and while it is all great you're really sticking out! No stuttering, no random digressions, a consistent thread of information, without it ever becoming boring. You're a professional speaker but I assume you put lots of conscious effort in and it really shows! :) I got a question: can you explain the reasoning for the ZvZ wall off at that timing (roughly 3:30)? Is it simply the time higher ladder players have their baneling nest finished? All my opponents (Gold, Plat) especially in ZvZ attacked either way before 3:30 or at a time where I would already have roaches. I immediatley climbed to Plat when I did the wall off before droning my second base, as it made it very easy to defend one base and proxies (used it in all match ups against proxies). But I guess building a roach warren right after the first base is ineffficient. I would love to understand what I'm looking for with this wall timing and why I it fails for me.

[@PiGCasts]

3:30 is around when ling speed finishes off hatch first so that's when all types of fast aggression can hit off a hatch first build. This also will often be fast enough to stop say a 17 gas 17 pool ling flood, though maybe needs to be just a tiny bit faster if they execute well. Now of course 13 gas 12 pool, really fast 1 base ling bane aggression and the like CAN hit faster, bu that's what other defensive tools like the queens, lings and spines are for. The walloff should NEVER get up before these faster timings. However it's likely you played a lot of players who were executing a bit slow so that walloff got up and made defending quite easy for you. However as you get higher you'll have to defend those 1-base builds with the spine queen ling defence as shown in the platinum episode. So to summarise 3:30 stops all the half committed and 2 and 3-base rushes. It's also not so early that its hurting our economy too bad. It's a nice middle ground. However if I see lings flooding out at say 3:00 --> and I can walloff in time - heck yeah, go for it! Make sure you check your opponents build whenever they hit you with fast aggression so you understand the context of what just happened. Important to recognise "oh this is a 12 pool" vs "oh this is just 6 ling pressure off a 16 pool" Gl hf mate!

[@HurrisonTea]

Gosh, the game 4 looks exactly what all my games in platinum 2 look like! Except I don't do such good desicions and by the time I have all things settled down my opponent has BCs or planetaries all around! Probably I just need to do things more clear

[@PiGCoaching]

yeah just making notes of what to do so you can do it faster next time means you'll learn to smash those situations with experience

[@level100psyduck9]

In the ZvR(P) match (the mass void ray one), you talk about not building spores too early because it hampers your economy. What if you can't get a successful scout? I got blindsided by BCs the other day because wall offs and marines denied all my scouting. I was thinking a spore in each mineral line and a three extra queens could be the answer, but is there a better one?

[@hamburgers7817]

Is there a reason you don't teach hydra ling bane? I like to play it but often struggle to get there. So I do see the benefit of just focusing on ling bane.

[@PiGCasts]

Adding it in the next episode for ZvP!

[@hamburgers7817]

@PiG Casts actually just saw u playing it on Twitch. I laughed at myself and was like guess I should just shut up and watch, haha. Thanks Pig.

[@andreiko4]

Great content

[@martinvidal2421]

at 2:09:50 how do u know is a voidray for sure and not an oracle for example?

[@alexgry4763]

You can see a transparent hull of ship that is being warped at a stargate.

[@strongerandwiser2023]

Its almost like you just read my message last night and uploaded this !

[@Francis_UD]

1:35:43 crying babies drones drones drones 😢 😢

[@doyoustropez8015]

Thank you for all the time you give to us🙏 Just a little question: Does your Nick name PIG Come from Pink Floyd?

[@PiGCasts]

Just another PiG in the wall! Nah haha I just like pigs

[@Gredddfe]

I think ling/bane/infestor is a pretty strong comp to demo. Hydras and mutas get deleted too hard.

[@Gredddfe]

"DIAMOND PLAYERS DON'T MULTIPRONG MMKAY???" Wow, that guy....

[@Gawd-z3c]

thanx

[@Gammawatt]

Hey PIG love you and your videos so much. All your content is so helpful and entertaining. Does anyone know how to get Observer PlusPlus? I’ve been wanting this so much for so long. I’ve asked countless streamers, and have googled my ass off. I’ve come to the realization observer Plus Plus just isn’t for me. 😂

[@alexgry4763]

I am eager to see a game vs a mass carrier skytoss. I lose except them 90% of games, with the 10% wins being made by a lucky base trade. It is frustrating that zerg has nothing to counter that unit at all. Makes me miss broodwar with it's devourers.

[@PiGCoaching]

corruptors hard counter carriers, but generally it's all just about identifying one of the common tells: Voidray first, forge + cannon walloff, multiple Stargates etc. Once you recognise that it's skytoss the easiest way to beat it is usually to just hit a 2-3 base mass hydra all-in attack. Often just speeding up your attack even a little can get in there when there's very few units to defend and get a really easy victory. The problem is as it scales up and they get storm, archons + carriers it gets very complicated to deal with that as you need ultras to clear the ground, vipers for parasitic bomb and lots of corruptors to dive the air units (preferably after most of the high templar are dead to the ultra/baneling). Usually skytoss builds have giant windows where you can crush them, but it's all about realising whats happening early enough and completely shifting gears to hit that hydra all in as fast as possible

[@alexgry4763]

@@PiGCoaching Tyvm for taking the time for such a detailed answer! I'm a SC2 beginner, currently at Gold 1. Nine days ago, when I wrote this question, I was a one-trick pony-always sticking to the B2GM 2023-style ling/bane combo, ignoring Hydras and caster units completely, and going 2-base roach vs Zerg. This got me a lot of defeats in ZvT and ZvP. Almost every Protoss I faced went void ray/carrier, and my Terran opponents abused the flying building mechanics to win base trades. Adding Hydras to my unit roster has made playing a lot easier for me.

[@TouZeBa]

Lol what happend exactly at 2:50:12 ? Rofl

[@PiGCasts]

Cheer alert when someone donates Twitch Bits lol. The higher the bit number the bigger the bowel movement lol

[@bradwick7683]

So how does a guy sign up to play you? I'm very new to Sc2 and all I know is from your videos. I'm a gold 3 Zerg and would love to play on your Terran B2GM when that gets going!

[@PiGCoaching]

Updates are posted in my Discord channel: discord.gg/E4xk8cB3Gc

[@rhoelg]

oh i love this series, hope i can be gold someday! lol

[@lexclouds7562]

Watching this series is... so fricking hilarious. Kinda dumb as I'm used to play way better*, but I like it! So relaxed 😊

[@Draktok]

what lol

[@K4G-117]

My buddy is wipping the floor with me zvz pushing to almost 4th base with 1/1 and spawns a mass of roachws at like 6min as im crossing and stomps me. Dont get how he has 4 queens 2 more bases and starting 2/2 at the same pace as your attack at game 8

[@PiGCoaching]

That's not possible unless you're playing a modded map. Make sure you host a ladder map next time

[@Alejandro-fm5wo]

Game 2 vs Zerg - Trying this, but every time I walk across the map, the guy has way more roaches. Happens even after they mad a bunch of worthless lings and I only made 4. Upgrades or not, they always win the fight. I'm not really seeing the advantage of skipping early gas and ling speed.

[@PiGCoaching]

Join my Discord community! discord.gg/SkhbzCM - post a replay in the zerg discussion channel so players can help you out

[@Alejandro-fm5wo]

@@PiGCoaching Thanks PiG! You are the man for this.

[@enriquegarciacota3914]

Yeeeeeah

[@Mizi63]

Spready Mercury hahahaha

[@nanowasabi4421]

Have an algorithm comment :)

[@PiGCoaching]

*Salute*

[@Parker-yp4jk]

Do you think starcraft 3 will be a thing

[@dekwoo1]

What is StarCraft?

[@MadoMax92]

pls mix hydras in

[@fopperer]

hitting diamond 3 is easy. play zerg, learn one build order. done.

[@PiGCoaching]

I've had hundreds of comments on my protoss and terran B2GM videos saying they made it to D3 with my beginner build orders for them too LOL

[@fopperer]

@@PiGCoaching idk, i only play zerg myself, lol

[@tommydashed4205]

Chess isn't really a perfect information game. Technically it is, but there is no human on the planet that can process all of the information available at any given moment on a chess board (except in the endgame where very few pieces are left). In fact, I would wager that even the world champion of chess is missing more relevant information in a chess game than Serral misses in a game of sc2. It seems crazy to think that chess could be more complicated than sc2 but the real time nature of sc2 makes it much more slanted towards tactics and mechanical ability that a lot of the potential complexity never actually comes to bear on the outcome of most games, even at top level. Just keep this in mind, the best AI wasn't completely outclassing top human sc2 players but the top chess player is around 2850 elo in chess while the very top engines are over 4k elo. The best engine is better at chess compared to Magnus than Magnus is compared to some amateur club players. That is how much information that is out of reach for even the best player on the planet.