Zerg Roach Strategies
Roaches are extremely effective and versatile units (especially after late-game upgrades are researched)
Sometimes in the midst of a battle it’s normal to get tense and anxious. But it’s a very bad habit of an inexperienced Terran player to forget about their lowered supply depots. Why? Because buried Roaches can get in. Roaches can travel underground with the Tunneling Claws upgrade, which also requires a Lair.
While burrowed, the Roach will regenerate its health extremely fast, at 5 hit points per second. Sometimes it is possible to defeat larger amounts of units with less Roaches by simply burrowing them to regenerate health and un-burrowing to continue the attack on the already damaged enemy units.
The Roach is an extremely effective unit to use against Marines, Stalkers and Zerglings, but try to avoid having your Roaches surrounded by large numbers of Zerglings. When surrounded, the Roach is prevented from using the long-range acid attacks and will fall back to less effective melee attacks.
Toward the mid or late-game, a good strategy is to use a horde of Roaches in combination with Infestors. The Infestor can use Fungal Infection to stop the opponent’s units in their tracks, and the Roach can clean them up.
Not to mention the Roach can use that time to burrow and regenerate. With Infestor’s ability to infest enemy units with the fungal infection to stop them from attacking, the Roach can regenerate life when burrowed even when the area is scanned by Terran’s satellite scanner using the Scanner Sweep ability.
Roach vs Protoss
In the scenario of using Roaches against a Protoss player, the Roach can defend against or defeat most Protoss ground units with the exclusion of Immortals (Which are the proper counter for the Roach unit on the Protoss side of things).
Roaches can burrow under the Sentry’s Force Fields, regenerate while traveling toward the other enemy units and un-burrow behind them.
Roach vs Terran
Going Roach against Terran can be effective against mass Marines, however the Roach unit is weak against Terran Marauders, and should be often used in combination with Zerglings against Terran armies consisting of Marines and Marauders.
Still the Roach is an ideal unit against Terran opponent because it literally absorbs a lot of damage from the heavy artillery of the Terran forces. Even for Siege Tanks it takes time to defeat a number of Roaches. A Roach will survive as many as 3 blasts from a Siege Tank in siege mode.
Roaches in combination with Mutalisks, Zerglings and Banelings will eradicate many combinations of Terran units. Roach is also a great harrasement unit which can travel while burrowed and in the hands of a skilled Starcraft player come completely undetected for a long period of time while remaining inside the enemy’s base.
Roach vs Zerg
Roaches are highly effective against small to mid-sized armies of zerglings as the Roaches acid attacks burn right through them.
Because by design of the game the Zerg gameplay is generally dependent mostly on a healthy economy, fast expand and reacting to the enemy units, most Zerg units are not very cost-effective in terms of production.
But unlike many other Zerg units the roach is a very cost/effective unit against early Zergling and Baneling rushes. When playing against another Zerg player, use Roaches and Mutalisks in a powerful combination. In the event that the Zerg opponent builds only ground units early on, an early Mutalisk (or a small number of them) can take care of winning the entire game. Once you kill off the Queen with the Mutalisks and the enemy player has no air defense or any anti-air units you are almost guaranteed to win the game.
However, note that when playing against skilled players any tactics that resemble those of a cheese strategy will be invalid.
Other resources about the Starcraft Roach Unit:
Roach Strategies at Team Liquid
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