PiG or ViBE or what?

This comparison is based on my wood/metal league perspective. Both content creators kind of state that below Diamond, nobody is really capable of playing the game properly because the basics are still done consciously. Until the basic mechanics like spending larvae and spreading creep are not an automatism, there are not enough mental resources for things like proper scouting, reacting to unit compositions or even multipronged harass or attacks without hurting the own game.

Below, the ➕ and ➖ are purely subjective. They can be read as “What I liked” and “What I didn’t like that much”.

PiG’s B2GM

YouTube series: PiG’s Zerg B2GM

➕

Relatively simple build
Aggressive play style
Basic micro for army handling (army splitting, slight stutter stepping)
Basic scouting

➖

Pretty much all-in as game plan for the lower leagues
No real plan for a late game transition

ViBE’s B2GM

YouTube series: ViBE’s Zerg B2GM

➕

Strict game plan: Always know what to do now and what to do next
Defensive units on 2 stages in the build
Defense by reinforcing the defensive units: macro under pressure
Handling of early cheese like cannon/bunker rush
How to maintain a strong economy at all times
Basic scouting

➖

A-Move roach/hydra sometimes hard-countered
No micro at all until army splitting gets introduced in Platinum

My experience

Win rate

I started playing PiG’s style. Coming back after such a long break, it was nice to have a short playbook and fewer things to care about. Just following a simple build, pumping units at some point and then moving out on the power spike of an important update is quite easy and fun. Being the relatively early aggressor and overwhelm the opponent with a bunch of Roaches and also reinforce this pack to follow up the attack wins many games between bronze and gold at least. Either right away or further down the road if the first push managed to do some serious damage. But from there it starts to get more complicated if the opponent successfully turtles and/or macros on an equal level as me.

This was the point where I found ViBE’s B2GM series and learned about his concept. I first practiced the slightly more complicated build in custom games, which basically holds hands until maxed. Since ViBE also encourages spreading creep in the downtime between macro cycles (instead of making it part of the macrocycle) I either didn’t spread creep because of lacking downtime or I messed up my macro cycles because creep spread distracted me too much.

After I felt somewhat comfortable with the new build and game plan, I started to hit ladder again and got surprised. My win rate dropped quite a bit for multiple reasons:

Early cheese before the safety Roaches (like proxy production or cannon rush) screwed me over because I did not have the experience to calmly respond correctly.
Mass splash damage like lots of Lurkers/Tanks/High Templars melted my a-moved Roach/Hydra army pretty efficiently, so re-maxing didn’t do the trick
After defending early aggression I could catch up and max out, but the opponent also already had the time to max out their upgraded Sky-Toss ball of death just rolled over me

Economy

85 active Workers really made me float a lot of resources, which didn’t feel good in the beginning. JaKaTaK’s TheStaircase had hammered into my brain to feel bad when floating that much. In my head I could only see the bad SQ and PiG also teaches throwing down one macro hatch per 1k floating minerals. With 85 workers and only building Roach/Hydra, I would end up with many, many macro hatches. (Maybe I should try that actually… 🤔) But then when throwing armies and re-maxing starts, the resources kind of went down again. Especially in cases where I had lost some workers to a drop and re-maxed on army by accident

ending up with 70 workers without noticing. In these cases, my bank melted like nothing.

This is the way?

So, what now?

I think if my goal was to climb the latter, faster PiG’s approach would probably be the way to go. The pure gains from pressuring the opponent in the early mid-game are quite impressive.

For long term improvement, ViBE’s approach might be the better option. Just getting reps in on maxing out on an upgraded Roach/Hydra army and keeping the economy healthy enough to re-max until the game is over (either way) feels like a great foundation for everything else to come. When somewhat solid macro is just muscle memory, this opens up the really creative part of the game without turning everything into a big mess.

On the one hand, I believe ViBE that any micro might be a distraction from getting better at macro. I can easily confirm that by looking at games where I did some micro. As I am 40+ I actually don’t have the intent to go wild on micro at any point in the future. But on the other hand, what I have seen from both PiG and ViBE in their Platinum videos using very, very basic micro like splitting the big ball of Roach/Hydra up into 2 balls and letting them a-move from two different angles can create way more favorable engagements.

I am not sure if just a-moving until Platinum will make me focus and improve on macro so much that my a-move army can overpower enough compositions and tactics. Or will it hold me back below Platinum for so long that it will annoy me, throwing away all my units all the time. Lately I implemented the simplest micro to split my army and my win rate went up by a noticeable margin.

Am I actually hurting my macro without noticing it, because I do this in Gold league?

/update: I can now answer the ending question from this blog post.