I'm a platinum zerg having trouble dealing with protoss lategame. Previously I always did Stephano's 12:00 roach max, which worked most of the time, but now I want to learn to play standard. So now I'm at an impasse here with the protoss deathball. I just can't beat it. I think my scouting may be an issue here - I sometimes overreact or underreact.
Replay 1: click here
I sent a 10 drone scout, which saw a gateway expand, so I went 3 hatch before pool, with a 5:40 roach warren to defend timings.
When I saw multiple gateways in my opponents wall, I produced roach/ling to defend, but I think I overproduced and came out behind. How do I know how much defense is necessary to defend early-midgame gateway pressure? And if they don't attack, and just sit with there units, how do I know when I can start droning again? Or maybe in this scenario I should just keep producing units and trickle in the drones instead.
Anyways, I ended up defending my opponents gateway aggression with too many units left over, which soon became useless. I droned up my third once I dealt with the zealots. Since I saw robo units when I counterattacked, I went for an infestation pit and produced mass static defense for a transition to swarm hosts.
I've seen Catz defuse the deathball this way on his stream using swarmhost/spine/spore/viper/infestor/hydra, so I tried it too. I felt my lack of APM was a large factor in my loss. If I played faster I could have a lot more static defense ready, dealt with their harass and micro'd better against feedbacks, but this is platinum and nobody knows what they're doing.
I'm sure my opponent made a lot of strategic errors that I could have exploited, but I don't know where they are. APM will be developed the more I play, nothing I can do about that. In lieu of more APM, what strategic errors did my opponent make, and how do I recognize and exploit them?
Replay 2: click here
This game was against the same player, who went for the same opening again. Gateway expand -> zealot pressure -> phoenix -> Robo deathball.
Here I tried roach/hydra into vipers, which failed miserably. Colossus just melted everything. What could I have done better?
Please don't tell me I need to brush up on my mechanics, that's pretty obvious. We had similar APM and I'm sure my opponent made a lot of strategic errors too, I just need to know where they are. Thanks for your replies.