How to deal with the protoss deathball as zerg?

[Aldrashan]

I just can't seem to beat protoss players that are platinum or higher. They just wall off their entire ramp and fast expand as always vs zerg.
Problem is that i have no clue how to harass them since no zergling is getting in that base any time soon. I always take a quick 3rd and try to get a 200 army after. When I see he's going for his 3rd i take my 4th and 5th.

When he gets to 200/200 and attacks I just get steamrolled and die. Altho I'm on 5 bases I just can't rebuild fast enough before he rapes 2 of my bases.
My main army composition exists of muta's and roaches. (Muta's so I can harass a bit atleast)

[RageasaurusRex]

moar hydralisk

[Deleted]

You need corruptors to deal with collosi. And infestors lategame are still the way to go to avoid deathballs from retreating.

Also if you're on 5bases and you let the protoss do what he wants, but more importantly he lets you do what you want, make sure you tech to either broods or ultras ( ultras best imo ) and remax on ultra/ling with upgrades melee attacks once your roach corruptor army is whiped out.

I play dia protoss myself, dealing with ling ultra is hard

[cabreil]

Double expo. You need to be ahead 1 base ahead as zerg. If you see them FE then expand and then expand again immediately and drone your ass off. You are going to have quite a bit of time.

[Wildmoon]

Use mutas to harass the hell out of them in mid game.

[D_K_night]

your choices are few.

when you scout that he forge fast expanded:

a) you throw up a fast roach warren, get roaches that blindingly fast as you can, and go attack. depending on how many cannons he's defending with, you may just outright kill his expo. But if he threw up too many cannons, and you went all-in with roach, you are in big trouble and will end up behind.

b) you do your best to out-macro him, the key to defeating the deathball is a combination of units. roach/infestor/corruptor, but your true hope is to trade armies with him, and remax faster than he can. you have to keep up on your injects.

[Aldrashan]

You don't let him get 200/200

A protoss who's left to get 200/200 will simple destroy you as Zerg.

Very helpful thank you! Maybe you didn't read the part where I asked HOW to keep him from ever getting 200/200.
Hydralisks are kinda useless since he has 3+ colossi.
Also, where should you place your 3rd expo on that one map (don't know the name) where you can spawn superclose to eachother and the base next to your natural is a gold base?

[Penguin FTW]

You gotta stack corruptors to deal with those colossi, otherwise they'll pew-pew-lazerz you to death all day.

[Wass]

Playing as high platinum toss all I can say is that you need to harass. Other people already said what I was gonna say, nydus, mutas, banedrops, anything to kill his probes

[inux94]

Roaches, Infestors, Corruptors.

You should never let a protoss get 200/200, if you both end up in a match going 200/200 you should ATLEAST have more resources/ lots of more eggs to reinforce.

[kel]

get roach/muta(for harass)/corruptor and then broodlord
just defend any early attacks with roaches and few lings harass lots with mutas, even a little poke that kills 1 probe is good, base up get broodlords and attack or just attack if you see you are waaaaaaaay ahead

[Slavemaker]

In all honesty I'd suggest watching the Day9 daily, if you cannot watch it live you can watch the archives and such... It's what I do to help me become a better Starcraft 2 gamer, other than that I don't know the answer =(.

[Lucarocks92]

you can do a 2 base all in timiming on him, i only play gold but if u are all in on a 2 base army and he's still teching and taking his 3rd u can do alot of damage.

also muta's are good to harass with since the protoss will be playing passive for a while u can keep him in his base longer by just harrassing, i often struggle against a high amount of muta's as protoss sometimes.

[Semihage]

Wait for Heart of Swarm.

[OrcsRLame]

PvZ the general idea from a zerg pov is to kill your opponent in the mid game by outmacroing him, and crushing him. If you can't do that, then you need to plan for late game. Zerg late game will require a good mix of units. Mutas are great for mid game harass, but they're weak in a straight up engagement. So you want to start replacing mutas with corruptors and brood lords. You want the backbone of your army to be roaches. Roaches are kind of fail on their own, but they make good tanks and in large numbers can help bring quite a lot of damage to enemy units and structures. To back the roaches up though, you need infestors.

The dps potential of fungal growth is absolutely insane. An AoE dot/root, it doesn't get much better than that. Infested terrans can also help quite a bit. If you can get fungals up on the entire enemy army, and then spam infested terrans, the protoss ball will melt very quickly with a good followup from roaches/corruptors/brood lords.

Even so, the main goal of zerg late game isn't to just win a straight up fight per se. It's all about the second push. You need to get 200/200, and then sit on a crapload of resources. Make sure you have tons of bases, and if necessary, plenty of macro hatches. You want to be able to lose your whole army, and then immediately shoot back up to 200/200. Then you just push and win.

From the protoss pov, he wants to just survive the mid game, and then inflict enough damage with his first 200/200 army to cripple you, so he doesn't have to try and remax. Hope that helps.

[PizzaSHARK]

Brood Lords are a terrible option versus Protoss. Blink Stalkers can very efficiently deal with them. You can make some if you have no more Colossi for your Corruptors to shoot, but only if you know he won't be able to pull off Void Ray/Colossus in the near future.

As Zerg, your goal is to simply trade armies with him whenever possible. You absolutely cannot let the Protoss hit 200/200, not without having lots of larva and resources in reserve. Spread the creep everywhere. Have a couple lings roaming around to pick off any scouting probes or proxy pylons. You should max out on Roach/Infestor, with enough Corruptors to at least two-shot Colossi. Infestors are crucial for damaging the entire deathblob - most of their units will be armored (most of the army will be stalkers, with a handful of zealots and any leftover sentries) and because the Protoss army tends to move as a blob, fungal can do enormous DPS. You should usually use the energy on fungal, but infested terrans can work exceptionally well if the colossi are dead. Engage, fungal them, back off, and repeat until they either start to run or until you gain the advantage.

You need to be on top of your injects. Zerg's only hope for winning against a 200/200 deathball is to out-produce the Protoss. You should be able to almost instantly remax on roaches and some infestors after the first engagement. You must kill their high-tech units like Colossi (and if possible, immortals) in the first engagement. Neural Parasite on Immortals is fantastic once the Colossi are dead.

Don't make Hydralisks unless you're going for an all-in timing, or he went stargate tech. If he goes stargate and only makes a couple of void rays, you can just make a few extra queens and a spore crawler or two and not have to waste money on hydralisks.

Generally speaking, you want to avoid ultralisks. Immortals wreck them and zealots are an extremely effective speedbump. They can be useful for breaking forcefields, but I personally think just making more units is a better use of resources. Likewise, don't bother with Brood Lords unless your Corruptors have nothing better to do.

Mutalisks are good for harass, but terrible for an actual fight. Use them to deny expansions, but once he starts getting close to 200/200, you need to trade them in for more roaches and more infestors.