Starcraft 2 Thread 6-Rax: All-in [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

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Spartacus

2011-06-01, 04:45 AM

StarCraft 2 is a real time strategy game by Blizzard that was released on July 27th, 2010. This thread is for general discussion with no real focus within the game.

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Past Threads:
One (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=142825)
Two (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158508)
Three (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=165601)
Four (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176154)
Five (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=189933)

Sharing replays:

1) Save your replay in Battlenet. Give it a descriptive name.
2) Find replay on hard drive. Usually in My documents/starcraft2/user#/users#/replays/multiplayer
3) upload it to a file share site. http://www.sc2replayed.com/ is good, as is www.sc2rep.com , and so is others.
4) post link here.

Downloading replays:

1) click on link
2) download file
3) to launch, double click on replay file or drag replay file onto starcraft2 shortcut. sometimes need to log in, but plays immediately.

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LordShotGun

2011-06-01, 05:57 AM

There is some gameplay videos of heart of the swarm now released.

2-3 videos stitched together here with some commentary from a caster I trust (he has visited blizzard HQ multiple times)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwkUrEZbIJs

http://sclegacy.com/feature/3-events/1016-may-2011-hots-gameplay-info

An hour long video of the Q & A session filmed by the afore mentioned youtuber
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdVLgDXZLC8

In short, based on what we see here, it seem as though the campaign is going to be exactly what was expected with leveling up kerrigan and "evolving" (aka upgrading) the zerg swarm. Also it seems like kerrigan is back to being the queen b**** of the universe yet somewhat nicer I guess.
So kinda like a mini queen b**** of the universe. She is wearing her ghost uniform but has her zergy hair and eyes.

Units- You will be forced to pick between two separate final evolutions for your units

Raptorlings-upgraded zerglings that have a short range jump ability similar to charge that allows them to surround a target easier.

OR

Swarmlings-You get an extra zergling per larve at no extra cost

Gorglings- Banelings that return resources based on what they kill. So if they die before killing they return nothing.

OR

Spitterling- Banelings are much larger and when the detonate or die, they split into normal sized banelings. So three banelings for the price of one.

Prowler- Roaches that can move while burrowed

OR

Leeches- Roaches that regenerate super fast underground and gain 10 permanent HP per kill up to +60

Gameplay

Kerrigan will be travailing in space on/inside a leviathan and will be assisted by a queen formed from the "memory" of herself as the queen of blades

More info on the SC legacy link above, I just summarized the most interesting.

A repost of my original information.

Artanis

2011-06-01, 10:35 AM

Team Liquid's Comprehensive Ladder Guide: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=195273

Also, my name on BNet is Legacy 229, on the NA server.

Spartacus

2011-06-01, 10:46 AM

Added and alphabetized.

EDIT: Changed the OP slightly. Hope there are no objections.

Karoht

2011-06-01, 11:14 AM

To respond to post in previous thread...

Re: New Units
Leviathan-It's likely that Zerg might get this AND another unit, as I imagine the goal by the end of the last expansion is for all 3 races to have a sort of 'flagship' unit.

Terran-Factory needs more play? Huh. Hokay.
Zerg-Roach Warren upgrade = access to new unit-That actually sounds spot on in terms of where in the progression Zerg seem to need a little something.
Protoss-Robo Bay produces Observers (tactical) Warp Prisms (tactical) Immortals (ground) and Colossi (ground). I think Robo Bay is rather lacking, but that's maybe just me. Someone made the suggestion about the Templar building. Possible upgrade to building allows merger of two Dark Tempar into something? Preferably something other than a Dark Archon?

Defensive Structures-I would love to see all 3 races get a new defensive structure. Something that requires a bit of interaction, not just an automatic turret like Photon Cannons. Maybe something with an energy bar and some sort of cast.

Someone made the suggestion also that the Planetary Fortress could use a calldown. Something non-economy related. Thoughts?

HalfTangible

2011-06-01, 11:17 AM

Spartacus

2011-06-01, 11:28 AM

Possible upgrade to building allows merger of two Dark Tempar into something?

They already merge into an Archon.

Maybe an upgrade to the Dark Shrine will allow a high and dark templar to fuse together?

They already merge into an Archon.

re: Robo Bay, how is it lacking? It's probably the single most used tech path of any race.

HalfTangible

2011-06-01, 11:29 AM

They already merge into an Archon.

No, High and Dark can't fuse with each other...

Spartacus

2011-06-01, 11:31 AM

Team Liquid says you're wrong (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Archon_Warp).

HalfTangible

2011-06-01, 11:33 AM

Team Liquid says you're wrong (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Archon_Warp).

Well maybe they'll add it :smallannoyed:

Winterwind

2011-06-01, 11:33 AM

No, High and Dark can't fuse with each other...Of course they can. :smallconfused:

While i've seen the dark and high templar work together in their armies i've seen little evidence of the cultural merging that fluff says they're going through...Considering all rumours point towards the Protoss completely fracturing into a ton of factions in Legacy of the Void, I rather doubt we are going to see developments that emphasize the merging of Protoss culture any time soon. Maybe as units appearing towards the end of LotV, but not any time sooner.

Spartacus

2011-06-01, 11:35 AM

Well maybe they'll add it :smallannoyed:

I have no idea what you mean by that statement.

HalfTangible

2011-06-01, 11:36 AM

I have no idea what you mean by that statement.

Maybe they will add a unit that can be formed via fusing a high and dark templar together ASIDE FROM the archon.... :smallannoyed:

Spartacus

2011-06-01, 11:38 AM

I don't think they're likely to take away an option, though.

HalfTangible

2011-06-01, 11:40 AM

I don't think they're likely to take away an option, though.

Why would they need to? >.>

Winterwind

2011-06-01, 11:42 AM

Why would they need to? >.>Because right now, if you want to, you can take a High and a Dark Templar and merge them together into an Archon, if an Archon is what you need at the time. If they changed what a High and a Dark Templar merge into together, they would be removing that option.

Spartacus

2011-06-01, 11:42 AM

So you can add something in it's place.

HalfTangible

2011-06-01, 11:48 AM

Because right now, if you want to, you can take a High and a Dark Templar and merge them together into an Archon, if an Archon is what you need at the time. If they changed what a High and a Dark Templar merge into together, they would be removing that option.

So you can add something in it's place.

Did i say change, at any point?

No, don't think i did.

Didn't i say add?

Why, yes i believe i did.

Sarcasm is the best medicine.

Winterwind

2011-06-01, 11:53 AM

Did i say change, at any point?

No, don't think i did.

Didn't i say add?

Why, yes i believe i did.

Sarcasm is the best medicine.So basically, add a second button, so there is one "Merge to Archon" and one "Merge to something else" ability?

Yeah, that might work.

Also, it would help this discussion and its mood a lot if you actually said what you intend to do, rather than getting annoyed at us for not guessing you meant stuff you did not write. And sarcasm tends not to be the best medicine for a polite discussion, usually works pretty well for poisoning one, though. :smallwink:

HalfTangible

2011-06-01, 11:56 AM

So basically, add a second button, so there is one "Merge to Archon" and one "Merge to something else" ability?

Yeah, that might work.

Also, it would help this discussion and its mood a lot if you actually said what you intend to do, rather than getting annoyed at us for not guessing you meant stuff you did not write.

It's not my fault you thought i meant 'delete' and/or 'replace' the other when all i said was 'add' :smalltongue:

And sarcasm tends not to be the best medicine for a polite discussion, usually works pretty well for poisoning one, though. :smallwink:

Who said it's for the conversation? It's for my annoyance and/or splitting headache :smalltongue:

Thiyr

2011-06-01, 12:00 PM

re: Robo Bay, how is it lacking? It's probably the single most used tech path of any race.

Depending on how you define tech path :P

Though joking aside, from my (admittedly low level and probably comparatively little) experience, I see the robo as needing a bit of help with units that are a smidge more consistently useful -before- the end of the tech tree (until you get colossi, you have the immortal, which I never see many other people use, observers, which are nice but nothing to really be pumping out consistently, and warp prisms, which I...think I used seriously once or twice?).

I also see that robo doesn't need much, either, as it is really the most viable mid/late game units toss gets. Templar of either variety end up being too fragile and difficult to mass produce, and I don't tend to see a whole ton of air nowadays.

Spartacus

2011-06-01, 12:04 PM

Thiyr

2011-06-01, 12:12 PM

Immortals are great at exactly one point in the game, and that's if the enemy (or you) is launching a timing attack before you (or you opponent) can get a Colossus out and you need something to help your Gateway army out. they aren't weak by any means, but they just aren't as good as Colossi.

Warp Prisms are rarely used, especially with the Templar nerf, but Observers are incredible.

Oh, don't get me wrong, love my Obs. But unless I see DTs or Banshees coming, I never really say "Man, I need to get some observers". I get one or two and position them to give me early warnings and leave it at that. And Immortals do a very good job of leading the charge against any kind of fortified tank position in PvT. The bigger problem I'm seeing is that as far as robo units are concerned, the only way to make it work is "Rush to the very end of your tech tree and hope they don't take advantage of how the unit -so tall it can be hit by anti air- has the oversight of not being able to -shoot up-." (Not saying colossi aren't good. Just saying that's a bit of "logic" that makes my brain twitch whenever I think about it)

Spartacus

2011-06-01, 12:20 PM

<snip>

Note that Colossi are hardly the only unit that occupies airspace that can't shoot up.

But yes, it does smack of getting crunch first and then filling in the fluff around it.

Thiyr

2011-06-01, 12:25 PM

Note that Colossi are hardly the only unit that occupies airspace that can't shoot up.

But yes, it does smack of getting crunch first and then filling in the fluff around it.

The real question is how many that take up air and ground space is more the part that's weird. Can't shoot up in the air makes sense. Can't shoot up on the ground makes sense. Can't shoot up when you occupy both is just weird though. Oh well.

Artanis

2011-06-01, 01:09 PM

Oh, something that hasn't been mentioned yet (at least in this thread): Team Liquid's preview of Heart of the Swarm.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=228212

Edit: A third replay site that can go in the OP: http://www.sc-replay.com/

But yes, it does smack of getting crunch first and then filling in the fluff around it.

Personally, I prefer it that way :smallwink:

Spartacus

2011-06-01, 01:11 PM

As do I, actually.

mangosta71

2011-06-01, 01:34 PM

Kinda makes sense with the weapons they carry, though. Targeting spots on the ground gives them both focus and convergence. The same principles apply to real world lasers.

Khosan

2011-06-01, 01:35 PM

The real question is how many that take up air and ground space is more the part that's weird. Can't shoot up in the air makes sense. Can't shoot up on the ground makes sense. Can't shoot up when you occupy both is just weird though. Oh well.

Technically, Colossi don't entirely occupy the ground. They have legs, sure, but units can walk under them quite easily. The only thing they can't do that air units can is move over buildings and chasms.

Spartacus

2011-06-01, 01:39 PM

Technically, Colossi don't entirely occupy the ground. They have legs, sure, but units can walk under them quite easily. The only thing they can't do that air units can is move over buildings and chasms.

It's annoying trying to describe them simply. They have all the disadvantages of air, with some of the upsides, and some of the disadvantages of ground, with none of the upsides.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-01, 01:51 PM

Immortals are VERY effective at breaking siege tanks if your opponent is going mass viking. Chargelot archon immortal is a very very powerful mix.

Spartacus

2011-06-01, 02:04 PM

Immortals are VERY effective at breaking siege tanks if your opponent is going mass viking. Chargelot archon immortal is a very very powerful mix.

That statement strikes me as amusing. If he's making vikings, they can kill tanks. What about if he makes tanks? :smalltongue:

Artanis

2011-06-01, 02:05 PM

That statement strikes me as amusing. If he's making vikings, they can kill tanks. What about if he makes tanks? :smalltongue:

Mothership :smalltongue:

Karoht

2011-06-01, 02:19 PM

Anyway, the point with robo bay getting a new unit is that some would agree that robo bay has two excellent but limited (ground) units. And while fans of the Dragoon would suggest that the Robo bay might be the perfect way to bring it back (as a heavier/tougher/more firepower version of the stalker) I hate to admit it, but an air/ground capable robo bay unit would be an excellent fit in most respects.

Perhaps when it comes to Protoss, the better question is, what role does it need to fill? GTG, ATA, ATG, GTA, or A/G to A&G.

9mm

2011-06-01, 02:22 PM

question: I have yet to get to play starcraft II, yet Heart of the swarm trailers are everywhere. will watching said trailers ruin Wings of liberty?

HalfTangible

2011-06-01, 02:28 PM

question: I have yet to get to play starcraft II, yet Heart of the swarm trailers are everywhere. will watching said trailers ruin Wings of liberty?

It may spoil one of the major plot points at the end of the story, but the game itself? no.

9mm

2011-06-01, 02:29 PM

It may spoil one of the major plot points at the end of the story, but the game itself? no.

then no watchy; thank you.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-01, 02:32 PM

Artanis

2011-06-01, 02:38 PM

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-01, 02:42 PM

SC2replayed isn't uploading....should I just use mediafire or is there a site that's working?

Karoht

2011-06-01, 02:50 PM

My TvZ and TvP suck so hard. halp!!!

I'm trying to open with marines and marauder pressure into banshee harass and medivacs (vikings if against colossi, more banshees if against ground/zerg.)

EDIT: My problem is that I just lose fights. EVery time the armies engage, I flat out lose.TvP, I just want to point out that Zealots are a lot tougher than people think. Especially against Marines. Especially if they have one Sentinel backing them up. And if they sunk some minerals into the first shield upgrade. This is just straight numbers talking, this isn't including elements of micro, Charge upgrade, etc.

As for Zerg, I have noticed that Roaches are tougher than they look VS Marines, and with only a handful of Zerglings to pin you down with, even just one volley from the Roaches can be very potent.

I'm highly guilty of underestimating these low end units. Be careful.

Artanis

2011-06-01, 03:12 PM

SC2replayed isn't uploading....should I just use mediafire or is there a site that's working?

There's also http://www.sc2rep.com/ and http://www.sc-replay.com/

The Glyphstone

2011-06-01, 03:36 PM

I made it through 30 pages of that TL thread before the "waaaaah no LAN Blizz sux 4ever" overwhelmed me.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-01, 04:16 PM

That statement strikes me as amusing. If he's making vikings, they can kill tanks. What about if he makes tanks? :smalltongue:

If he has enough vikings that your colossi can't go in, immortals are your next best option. The hardened shield is very good at soaking tank fire.

ShneekeyTheLost

2011-06-01, 07:34 PM

Immortals are also a hard-counter to roach rushes. If you see your opponent massing roaches (easy with an obs out), two or three immortals will slaughter even ten or more roaches, with proper placement and sentry support.

I'd like to see an upgrade for the Immortal to give additional Shield hp, possibly additional damage reduction for shield, that would give them the 'tank' feel the devs were looking for.

Alternately, shield batteries would make them insanely difficult to punch through. But those were a thing of BW that I wouldn't want repeated.

dgnslyr

2011-06-01, 09:37 PM

I wouldn't mind seeing Shield Batteries as a campaign-only building, though, in Legacy of the Void. That'd be an interesting combo.

Just like Lurkers. I'd like to see them in the campaign for HotS.

DrizztFan24

2011-06-02, 12:32 AM

New toss unit, eh? How about we fix the carrier first :P I want me some carriers that don't suck. Well they don't suck but they are incredibly cost inefficient. Especially with that messed up engage/attack range thing. How are you supposed to micro without messing that up?

Make a seperate flagship for the protoss that requires both the dark shrine and the templar archives, and it is built from the dark shrine.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-02, 12:48 AM

Suedars

2011-06-02, 01:29 AM

Carriers are super efficient. Just consider them like broodlords. They're really long range, and are used to safely break down enemy positions from the air.

However, just like broodlords, on their own they're pretty bad.

They're terrible compared to Broodlords. If marines shoot broodlings, they're wasting their fire and just die. If marines shoot Interceptors, they take them all out incredibly quickly and your carriers are useless. The fact that units can neutralize them without ever actually getting in range to shoot the Carriers themselves negates their range advantage, making them utterly useless as long range siege units.

Also I'd really like to see Toss get some form of mobile detection outside of the Robo. They're the only race that has to commit to a specific tech tree in order to get detection out on the map.

Thiyr

2011-06-02, 01:39 AM

They're terrible compared to Broodlords. If marines shoot broodlings, they're wasting their fire and just die. If marines shoot Interceptors, they take them all out incredibly quickly and your carriers are useless. The fact that units can neutralize them without ever actually getting in range to shoot the Carriers themselves negates their range advantage, making them utterly useless as long range siege units.

Honestly, I've been fairly happy with carriers whenever I've used them. Interceptors getting shot down sucks, but they last long enough to do good damage. And you seem to act like the interceptors just plain die off straight away. When there's more than one carrier (and who uses one carrier? That's just weird), they're not getting focused down, and setting them to auto-rebuild means they're gonna wear down anything that can't take the carrier itself down. Heck, ended up winning a game like that. Stalkers took down the interceptors every so often, but the carriers never died, and the stalkers took enough casualties that it was well worth it.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-02, 01:41 AM

Inhuman Bot

2011-06-02, 01:57 AM

DrizztFan24

2011-06-02, 02:05 AM

@^ Silver doesn't command THAT much respect :smallbiggrin:. That is why I threw that disclaimer in there. Just because I made it work in silver a handful on times doesn't mean it will work in high silver or even in gold.

I've used them in silver with success in PVP. I open 3gate stargate with phoenix's and then tech up to carriers as a support unit for gateway heavy armies. But I haven't used it in high level play...because I am not high level.

Spartacus

2011-06-02, 03:39 AM

Anatharon makes a very strong point for Carriers. Surprising someone with Carriers doesn't work so much, because they're expecting to get Vikings/Corruptors anyway. At least when you make Cattlebruisers, anti-air isn't typically a huge priority against Terran.

Also, +1 shield isn't as good on Zealots as +1 armor is, and it costs more.

squeekenator

2011-06-02, 07:29 AM

Actually, 0/0 rines die super fast to carriers.

OTOH, if they have 3/3 rines and you have 0/0 carriers, they gonna destroy ya hard. That's cos having 6 upgrades more than your opponent's units is a big deal. If you get your air ups going, you can do some serious killing.

Assuming equal upgrades, carriers lose badly to their cost in anti-air units. Even if you somehow manage to get multiple stargates (because one simply won't produce enough carriers to make a difference) and a fleet beacon without your opponent noticing, they also die to their cost in marines, stalkers or hydralisks. Equal upgrades is, of course, a situation you'll almost never see - your opponent is always going to be investing in upgrades for their ground units, but if the Protoss tries to make air upgrades he's going to put himself noticably behind. Barring any sort of ridiculous circumstances, your opponent will always out-upgrade you if you try using carriers. They're also very expensive, take forever to build and require a massive investment in tech, so just trying to make carriers costs so much and takes so long to pay off that generally you'll die before any of them pop out. Carriers are awesome, and I'd really love to see them get used, but sadly they're the perfect combination of stupidly expensive and woefully underpowered. Their only real purpose in a high-level game is to diss an opponent who you've greatly outplayed.

Winterwind

2011-06-02, 08:49 AM

I pretty much never use carriers, because my thought process when it comes to carriers is something like this:
- Carriers were fairly well balanced in SC1. Powerful but expensive; a good fire support unit to use in PvTs that could kill the opponent if it caught them unprepared enough, but usually was just nice to have without being either over- or underpowered.
- Carriers in SC2 cost more or less the same (they start with 4 Interceptors, but the cost of those are pretty much negligible versus the cost of the entire carrier).
- Carriers in SC2 have base armour 2 rather than base armour 4, making them far more vulnerable to all light weapons that would have hardly bothered a SC1 carrier.
- Interceptors in SC2 have 3.33 damage/second rather than the 6 damage/second they had in SC1. Moreover, they are penalized doubly by armour, unlike in SC1.

So carriers in SC2 are much, much weaker than in SC1. Well, doesn't necessarily mean much, considering the environment has changed, right? So let's look at that.
Terrans: With Vikings, have much better anti-air than Goliaths. Also, Marines can actually hurt carriers now.
Zerg: With Corruptors, have much better anti-air than they used to in SC1.
Protoss: With Void Rays and Blink-Stalkers, have much better anti-air than they used to in SC1.

So, in other words, carriers were balanced in SC1, and are much weaker in SC2, while facing much better anti-air.

Logic compels me to conclude that carriers must therefore be crap in SC2. :smalltongue:

LordShotGun

2011-06-02, 09:01 AM

I'd like to see an upgrade for the Immortal to give additional Shield hp, possibly additional damage reduction for shield, that would give them the 'tank' feel the devs were looking for.

I would MUCH rather have a range upgrade for my immortals. Stick it onto the robotics bay with a cost of perhaps 150-100 for a +2 range bonus (total range of 7 similar to a tank mode siege tank). This I think would MASSIVELY encourage more immortals to be mixed into an army composition simply because you won't have to micro stalkers to allow them to fire and by sticking the upgrade onto the robotics bay it would be more balanced then having range 7 immortals right away.

Artanis

2011-06-02, 09:42 AM

VV I say this with all due respect, but it IS silver league.
Don't forget that 60% of all players are Gold or worse. With that in mind, I figure that too weak at some levels + balanced at others > too strong at some levels + balanced at others. If buffing Carriers would make them overpowered at lower levels, I'd rather they stay weak.

mangosta71

2011-06-02, 10:07 AM

That's the same difficulty that every online game runs into. What point in the player distribution should they balance for? The top-end people that wring every scrap of potential out of every single thing in the game? The average player, who can use maybe half the things in the game really well, but gets crushed when his opponent is good at using something that he's bad at using the counter to? The remedial players who have a smug sense of entitlement because they bought the game and think that should make them unbeatable even though they have absolutely no idea what they're doing?

Take a guess as to which of those three categories of players spends the most time whining on forums about the game being "broken", btw.

Karoht

2011-06-02, 10:11 AM

I said it before and I'll say it again.
I consider Carriers to be something to 'Hold the Line' with, in the air. If you just spent the money in 4 Carriers, it's worth your mineral investment to use 2-4 Sentinels worth of Hallucination to keep them safe. This along with your Pheonix/Void Ray escort of course.
Against static units and defenses, Carriers are just awesome. Against most units or groups of units, they lose out.

Oh, and the preview of HotS looks awesome. I think the evolution of units concept is excellent for the campaign setting. Sounds like lots of replay value for unit combos.

Spartacus

2011-06-02, 11:20 AM

The problem is, I can't see a situation where I wouldn't rather have spent my money into Colossi, Stalkers or Void Rays. Preferably a mix of all three.

Also, the unit is called a Sentry, not a Sentinel. I assume you play in another language?

Thrawn183

2011-06-02, 11:36 AM

My problem with carriers is simply that you have to build a robo bay to get observer(s). If you're looking for a big powerful unit, you're one tech structure away from colossi and you don't have to get a second set of upgrades.

Spartacus

2011-06-02, 12:01 PM

That is also a problem with Templar tech. People wanted Archons to be massive detectors, but they're massive with +1 range instead. Not sure what I think about that. Zerg just needs Lair, and Terran can scan with only Barracks tech (although dedicated detectors are hard to get, I admit).

Thrawn183

2011-06-02, 03:04 PM

I want to see protoss get a harass unit from the robo tree and a detection unit from one of the other two.

Yes I would be fine with getting rid of sentries to make this happen.

Karoht

2011-06-02, 03:33 PM

I want to see protoss get a harass unit from the robo tree and a detection unit from one of the other two.

Yes I would be fine with getting rid of sentries to make this happen.

Excellent suggestions.

Detector from Gateway?
Would really make early Stealth plays hard. But, Protoss would have another tool to respond to early Stealth, if it was scouted.
Detector from Starport?
Huh. That would be different. I wonder what else it would do. Air based caster unit maybe?
Harrass from Robo?
That sounds about right. Or maybe something that helps facilitate a Harass even?

Scarabs.
Remember the Scarabs from the old Reavers? Same concept, small quick bug robot. Maybe not necessarily explode like the old Scarabs though. But, this would end up like an expensive Protoss Zergling if it just had a normal attack. It would need something to make it useful, and not just an explosion. Maybe it does no damage, but does an AoE stun/slow and blows itself up? Perhaps it would work like an EMP, or a weak EMP (think Ghost EMP only weaker-reduces X shield and X Energy, where X <= 75)?

Also, because they are small, they can move through friendly units at no reduction of movement speed (or a slight one), and friendly units can walk right over them with no issue.

Spartacus

2011-06-02, 05:42 PM

They already get Warp Prisms. That's a great way to harass.

LordShotGun

2011-06-02, 09:10 PM

They already get Warp Prisms. That's a great way to harass.

Really they are not. The are slow (without the upgrade) have very small cargo space (gateway units cost 2 food) have no purpose in your normal army and are very very very weak for their special warp-in ability that requires them to stay still.

Compare to medivacs, medivacs move pretty quickly, mesh well with your normal army and since marines are 1 food and have stim a powerful attack force can be dropped anywhere.

Same with nydus worms. Nydus worms can come from anywhere, generate creep, have no limit to cargo space but cannot move.

I think warp prisms need another ability to make them worth making. Since people kinda want shield batteries but kinda don't, how about some AoE ability that either immediately starts the shield recharging process or restores energy to a targeted unit.

ShneekeyTheLost

2011-06-02, 10:34 PM

Anything carriers can do, either void rays or collossi can do better. Right now, there is zero reason to build any.

arguskos

2011-06-02, 10:38 PM

Anything carriers can do, either void rays or collossi can do better. Right now, there is zero reason to build any.
Uh... be money sinks. Carriers are better at that than anything else.

Also, so, I'm playing again. Man, I'm bad. :smallsigh: And yet, somehow, placed back into Gold 2v2.

Inhuman Bot

2011-06-02, 10:43 PM

Uh... be money sinks. Carriers are better at that than anything else.

Also, so, I'm playing again. Man, I'm bad. :smallsigh: And yet, somehow, placed back into Gold 2v2.

Mothership, Archons. Sorry. :smalltongue:

ShneekeyTheLost

2011-06-02, 10:48 PM

Mothership, Archons. Sorry. :smalltongue:

I dunno about Mothership... you can build only one, so not much of a resource-sink there.

Archons, however, I will agree with you.

arguskos

2011-06-02, 10:59 PM

I dunno about Mothership... you can build only one, so not much of a resource-sink there.

Archons, however, I will agree with you.
Archons aren't terribad, now that they're Massive. They need something else still, but they're not awful or anything. They're just not worthy buying templar for the exclusive purpose of archons. Good recycling unit though.

Really, Carriers are the biggest money sink I can think of, mostly due to auto-building replacement interceptors. They're redundant, expensive, actively drain your money, are easily focused down, and all sorts of other bad things. They define the term "glass cannon".

Also, dammit, Protoss need something useful at the high ends of the tech tree. All they have are colossi, and those aren't good against, say, AIR units. :smallsigh:

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-02, 11:03 PM

Archons are spectacular now, Archon/Chargelot is winning a lot of top tier games. DTs are amazing harass and do SO much damage.

arguskos

2011-06-02, 11:06 PM

Archons are spectacular now, Archon/Chargelot is winning a lot of top tier games. DTs are amazing harass and do SO much damage.
See that's what I thought. Archons deal damage by the Metric ****Ton, are big tanky bastards, and can be made anywhere. I don't see the issue (they're expensive though X_X).

Weak to EMP though. :smallsigh:

The Glyphstone

2011-06-02, 11:30 PM

In Utter Darkness on Brutal. Arrrrgh.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-02, 11:45 PM

Ooooh, I figured out an awesome way to do IUD this time around!!!

Chargelots, immortals and phoenixes, and some archons. Basically, constant production of immortals off the robos you get free, produce air whenever you feel short on air, and when you get the carriers, just build as many carriers as you can get, and maxe a third stargate, though only use it if you can afford to while still making immortals. As long as you get to the mothership with a decent sized force, you're all good. From here, keep the entire army in your main base, all cloaked due to mothership, and focus fire the overseers. Try and keep at least a few immortals alive if possible, so they keep sending ground only units at you instead of mass hydra corruptor muta.

Make SURE you are getting all the upgrades asap. 2 Forge 2 Cyber core, get air and ground ups.

I got the +750 achievement that way, it was awesome. Immortals are so underused.

ShneekeyTheLost

2011-06-02, 11:58 PM

Immortals are so underused.

Because most people use M&M&M or Muta/Ling/Bling or chargelot/stalker/sentry+Colossi. Which all are the exact wrong unit compositions to use Immortals on.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-03, 12:20 AM

silly fast firing units....:smallsigh:

arguskos

2011-06-03, 12:29 AM

silly fast firing units....:smallsigh:
More "dammit marines".

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-03, 12:35 AM

2 marines and a marauder walk into a bar. But there's no counter.

Thiyr

2011-06-03, 02:31 AM

Because most people use M&M&M or Muta/Ling/Bling or chargelot/stalker/sentry+Colossi. Which all are the exact wrong unit compositions to use Immortals on.

I suppose more stalkers and fewer lots makes immortals work out a bit better just for their damage output, and if zerg goes heavy roach they're great, but that's...about it. Tanks almost always have 'rine support that just shreds immortals. And don't get me started on ghosts. If there's one unit I hate to be on the receiving end of...

faceroll

2011-06-03, 02:48 AM

2 marines and a marauder walk into a bar. But there's no counter.

Ooh, that's a good joke formula.

Spartacus

2011-06-03, 06:12 AM

Weak to EMP though. :smallsigh:

At least it isn't BW EMP. Takes more than one nowadays.

Winterwind

2011-06-03, 06:15 AM

So, reminder: The next GitP StarCraft 2 session is tomorrow. Hope you all come in great numbers. :smallcool:

LordShotGun

2011-06-03, 09:10 AM

In Utter Darkness on Brutal. Arrrrgh.

Having problems? Really? Ok. I find this the easiest of the brutal protoss missions

Best thing to do is build a second forge and a second cyber core and pump upgrades while you build a robo bay and build ONLY colossi until you gain the ability to build carriers, then only build them.

Your limiting factor will always be gas so start building cannons on the second level. Forget about the first level for cannons but protect the archive with the colossi. Use your phoenix to lift up the hybrid reavers (the melee ones) and forget about the ranged ones as they don't deal as much damage.

By the time the archive finishes locking down you should retreat to the second level and constantly produce 3,3,3 carriers as later waves incorporate WAYYYYYY to many reavers for your colossi to handle. Doing this I got over 4000 kills until eventually there were just way too many corruptors to handle.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-03, 10:37 AM

Having problems? Really? Ok. I find this the easiest of the brutal protoss missions

Best thing to do is build a second forge and a second cyber core and pump upgrades while you build a robo bay and build ONLY colossi until you gain the ability to build carriers, then only build them.

Your limiting factor will always be gas so start building cannons on the second level. Forget about the first level for cannons but protect the archive with the colossi. Use your phoenix to lift up the hybrid reavers (the melee ones) and forget about the ranged ones as they don't deal as much damage.

By the time the archive finishes locking down you should retreat to the second level and constantly produce 3,3,3 carriers as later waves incorporate WAYYYYYY to many reavers for your colossi to handle. Doing this I got over 4000 kills until eventually there were just way too many corruptors to handle.

I'm having a crunch on both minerals and gas, strangely, and can't even survive long enough for the archive to lock down. At 300/200 a pop, I've got 4 Robo Facilities, but they run out of minerals too fast - if I only build colossi, the Reavers and Mutalisks rip them to shreds - I don't start with enough Pheonixes to graviton all the reavers with their Zergling meatshields. I think it may be my rusty macro at fault, but I'd really like to figure out how I can take advantage of the orange crystal deposit - planting a nexus there just means the very first NW wave diverts to kill it.

The best I managed was 5 minutes-odd to go, when a three-pronged attack of zergling swarms overwhelmed my dozen or so Colossi.

Thrawn183

2011-06-03, 11:42 AM

I remember doing that mission on brutal. I looked all over the place for how to take the gold and hold it. Eventually I just didn't even bother. I'm pretty sure I just made colossi off of 2 robo's.

arguskos

2011-06-03, 12:08 PM

So, reminder: The next GitP StarCraft 2 session is tomorrow. Hope you all come in great numbers. :smallcool:
Sadly, I will not be. Tomorrow is like my busiest day ever (class, yardwork, party). :smallsigh:

Will try to hit up next week.

Karoht

2011-06-03, 12:09 PM

You have to commit a fair chunk of resources to taking and holding that.
On hard, my move was to wait for the rush from that side, down it, and park on the other side of the bridge. There is a cliff that the Colossi can walk up and perch on, and Stalkers can Blink up there. With that, you can hold that area for quite a while until you get some Photon Cannons up.

Take your Probes over, start Nexus, start Extractor, throw a few Pylons. Minute the Pylons are up, get Photon Cannons up. The minute they are all up, your Nexus should just reach completion. If you make it to that stage, just send 2 or 3 more Colossi over to stand in your Pylon/Photon field, and maybe occasionally Warp In some Stalkers. You might consider at that point also moving some Immortals in to choke that end of the bridge. Abandon defending the place the moment your Colossi on that side fall down dead.
PS-Saturate the gas immediately.

Also, I went with more of a Gateway focus instead of a Carrier focus. I found that having those quick response units (20+ at a time with Warp In) meant I was able to quickly and cheaply reinforce areas while my Robo Bays did most of the hard work.

It also meant if I got desperate, I could spam High Templar, burn all their Psi-Storms, and then start them all Merging into Archons to hold the line.
And, Dark Templar are awesome for holding the choke points if you can snipe the detectors fast enough. Remember, if they can't detect it, they can't kill it. If they can't kill it, they can't walk through it.

I held the courtyard area pretty much all the way until I hit about 2000 kills, then started fighting a retreat back into the main area. Trust me, the minute you have the Mothership, SPAM VORTEX. And rotate your Carriers to give them time to get shields back. I hit 4000 on hard before I finally got overwhelmed and my major air force got wiped out. At which point I used my Warp In to stall for time. Spammed Archons and Stalkers did great for the last minute of combat, got another 300 kills in before I finally ran out of materials to produce units with. The final charge of Zealots was epic though. Photon Cannons only killed another 30 units after that before the sheer numbers just broke them all. Once they broke the line, it only took them about 20 seconds to wipe out every last building in my base.

Suedars

2011-06-03, 12:13 PM

I suppose more stalkers and fewer lots makes immortals work out a bit better just for their damage output, and if zerg goes heavy roach they're great, but that's...about it. Tanks almost always have 'rine support that just shreds immortals. And don't get me started on ghosts. If there's one unit I hate to be on the receiving end of...

It's worth making one or two to lead the charge if a Terran has you contained with tanks, even if he does have quite a few marines. You just want them as suicide units to break the contain.

Thiyr

2011-06-03, 12:13 PM

I'm having a crunch on both minerals and gas, strangely, and can't even survive long enough for the archive to lock down. At 300/200 a pop, I've got 4 Robo Facilities, but they run out of minerals too fast - if I only build colossi, the Reavers and Mutalisks rip them to shreds - I don't start with enough Pheonixes to graviton all the reavers with their Zergling meatshields. I think it may be my rusty macro at fault, but I'd really like to figure out how I can take advantage of the orange crystal deposit - planting a nexus there just means the very first NW wave diverts to kill it.

The best I managed was 5 minutes-odd to go, when a three-pronged attack of zergling swarms overwhelmed my dozen or so Colossi.

I pulled off the harder achievement doing similar to what Señor Shotgun did. Forsake the lowground entirely Set yourself up top. Start off with colossus spam, but don't make more robos. use the minerals you're saving to build an impenetrable cannon wall at the top of the ramps, parking the colossi between the two. Once you get the opportunity to, start spamming colossus-phoenix. You'll probably be fine once you get somewhere close to I want to say 12ish phoenixes. Then start churning out void rays. Keep the voids and the phoenixes in separate control groups. Graviton the hybrid (who are really the only danger at this point), focus them down with the voids, and the remaining colossi mop up anyone at the cannon wall fairly well. repair the wall as needed, and if you're doing a decent job with the graviton, you can get past the second achievement mark with that. Phoenix/void will do better than pure carrier, in part because lifted hybrid are hybrid that can't do anything.

Oh yea, and when your line breaks, float anything that doesn't need to walk over the place between the gold and your main and keep it there. You can deal with the flying units peicemeal there and rack up the last few kills if you need to.

And the gold really is just a trap. Some weird frog-lookin'-guy told me so

Karoht

2011-06-03, 12:16 PM

And the gold really is just a trap. Some weird frog-lookin'-guy told me soI retract my previous suggestion in favor of this meme strategy.

Douglas

2011-06-03, 01:05 PM

And the gold really is just a trap. Some weird frog-lookin'-guy told me so
That's odd, I had very little trouble mining that expansion to the ground on Brutal. Send a probe to build the Nexus ASAP at the start of the mission, saturate it by moving probes from the main, drop 4 or 5 photon cannons between it and the ramp, and defend with your main army when necessary.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-03, 02:13 PM

Karoht

2011-06-03, 02:34 PM

I'm leery about using a DT wall-off, since it failed so tremendously on Echoes of the Future (Brutal) from Banelings mixed into Zerglings. It also turned into a disaster when I tried it on hard, mainly because of my poor Pheonix micro though.Funny, come to think of it, I've barely seen any Banelings on that mission.
Also, great reason to wall off with Immortals out front, DT's ahead of them, and Collossi behind the Immortals, and maybe mix in some High Templar support. Works like a charm, IF you can snipe the detectors quick enough. If Banelings make it through the DT's, they won't do much to the Immortals. You won't see much in the way of detectors in the early waves anyway.

Artanis

2011-06-03, 02:40 PM

Technical question: what graphics setting do I have to put where to make Terran decals show up? Protoss and Zerg decals seem to work just fine, but Terran ones only show up in the unit info panel:

http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll41/LegacyCWAL/Starport.jpg

:smallconfused:

Spartacus

2011-06-03, 02:49 PM

So for season two it seems I am a Terran player, as trolling with all Marines is too much fun to pass up.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-03, 02:51 PM

Funny, come to think of it, I've barely seen any Banelings on that mission.
Also, great reason to wall off with Immortals out front, DT's ahead of them, and Collossi behind the Immortals, and maybe mix in some High Templar support. Works like a charm, IF you can snipe the detectors quick enough. If Banelings make it through the DT's, they won't do much to the Immortals. You won't see much in the way of detectors in the early waves anyway.

It's worth a shot, I guess - the problem is producing enough DT to set it up - the base starting troops might be able to handle the first wave or two, but not producing anything to replace the defensive mobile force while I pump out DTs could get me overrun.

Khosan

2011-06-03, 03:00 PM

Oh sweet jegus, what have I done.

I signed up for the GeForce SC2 Pro/Am (http://geforce.cevo.com/event/geforce-starcraft-2-pro-am/) on a whim.

This is either going to be very funny or very sad for me. At least I'm gold/diamond level so maybe I won't lose everything at the drop of a hat since I'm in the Amateur division.

arguskos

2011-06-03, 03:20 PM

I'm leery about using a DT wall-off, since it failed so tremendously on Echoes of the Future (Brutal) from Banelings mixed into Zerglings. It also turned into a disaster when I tried it on hard, mainly because of my poor Pheonix micro though.
I've done it on Hard, but it does definitely require some solid Phoenix micro on those detecting hybrids. I've also done an Immortal/Zealot/HT mix once, using storms then recycling them into Archons to tank and be AA alongside the phoenix. That was fun, but damn if it wasn't fiddling. One screw up on your placement, and things got ugly. :smallsigh:

Runestar

2011-06-03, 07:31 PM

That's odd, I had very little trouble mining that expansion to the ground on Brutal. Send a probe to build the Nexus ASAP at the start of the mission, saturate it by moving probes from the main, drop 4 or 5 photon cannons between it and the ramp, and defend with your main army when necessary.

I have never really had success mining from that expansion either, so I guess it is a matter of skill (of which I am lacking). :smalltongue: However, I tend to end up with a lot more minerals than I can spend anyways, and photon cannons are so useless in that mission that there is little point in spamming them save for when you have reached the food cap (and even then, they contribute very little).

Thrawn183

2011-06-03, 09:12 PM

Ok, I'm done trying to go carrier. The final insult was playing against a zerg that went roach/spinecrawler. You'd think carriers would be great against that. Gah, they're just so awful.

HalfTangible

2011-06-03, 09:36 PM

Ok, I'm done trying to go carrier. The final insult was playing against a zerg that went roach/spinecrawler. You'd think carriers would be great against that. Gah, they're just so awful.

I find that roaches are awesome against almost any air you can throw at them. They're extremely resilient for ground units, and they can't be blocked or distracted by your aerial forces, so they can go straight for your buildings.

This is, of course, completely reveresed when the roaches are on the defensive.

LordShotGun

2011-06-03, 09:55 PM

I'm having a crunch on both minerals and gas, strangely, and can't even survive long enough for the archive to lock down. At 300/200 a pop, I've got 4 Robo Facilities, but they run out of minerals too fast - if I only build colossi, the Reavers and Mutalisks rip them to shreds - I don't start with enough Pheonixes to graviton all the reavers with their Zergling meatshields. I think it may be my rusty macro at fault, but I'd really like to figure out how I can take advantage of the orange crystal deposit - planting a nexus there just means the very first NW wave diverts to kill it.

The best I managed was 5 minutes-odd to go, when a three-pronged attack of zergling swarms overwhelmed my dozen or so Colossi.

4 robotic facilities is wayyyyyyy too many. The two you start off with are fine. While your robo bay is building build a couple immortals outta the bays. Always remember to keep up on upgrades out of the double forge/cyberbay. Once robo bay pops build nothing but colossi.

They don't start you out with the best saturation so build about a dozen probes right away.

As for your starting units, I keep all my air one one hot key and all my ground on another, this way I can grav beam whenever I want. Also don't forget about zeratul's void prison. That can take one reaver out.

If you would like I can upload a replay since I just did the mission yesterday on brutal. Or, this youtube video shows one guy doing it.

Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVy3Ewwlu3I&feature=channel_video_title

Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8drbBK_VtA&feature=channel_video_title

Turalisj

2011-06-04, 03:28 PM

The thunder rolls.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XH7kvF80Ds

And the lightning strikes.

Yes, I am bored.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-04, 03:58 PM

MLG tournament is going on, HD streams are free. 2 streams going on most of the time, Day9 and DJ Wheat casting one, and Tastetosis casting the other.

Koreans playing, Idra is undefeated, so much awesome play involved on every side....:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

arguskos

2011-06-04, 04:02 PM

Silverraptor

2011-06-04, 06:37 PM

I encountered my first 4-gate! Admittedly, it was a late 4 gate. But still, it was a 4 gate, and I won (http://www.sc-replay.com/replay/04-06-11/54740-Silverraptor-VS-RogueRaven.html?justUp=1)!:smallbiggrin:

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 08:07 PM

Aaand success this time - the DT wall-off worked like a charm this time around. Sarah Kerrigan Portrait, here I come!:smallbiggrin:

And it turns out Breakout is incredibly fun when you can't just bubble and blitz, but have to find all the secret hidden ledges to snipe from. Am I a bad person for nuking Raynor's base and finishing the level on my own?

Thiyr

2011-06-04, 09:44 PM

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 10:59 PM

More importantly...I can't believe I complained about In Utter Darkness, with Engine of Destruction coming up.

I've tried mass Wraiths, support with a Siege/Marine ball, Science Vessel and Mule spam (the worst, the computer is psychic at sniping Mules), and the Odin keeps getting overwhelmed. What's the best way to go about this one?

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-04, 11:03 PM

Use air (cloaked wraiths do it better) to hit siege tanks before they get in range, use MMM and SCV support to keep the Odin going.

Douglas

2011-06-04, 11:09 PM

I've tried mass Wraiths, support with a Siege/Marine ball, Science Vessel and Mule spam (the worst, the computer is psychic at sniping Mules), and the Odin keeps getting overwhelmed. What's the best way to go about this one?
Personally, I did SCV, Science Vessel, and Battlecruiser spam. On Brutal difficulty, the Odin is powerful but not powerful enough to really be your primary focus. Treat it as an unusually resilient subject of an escort mission, not as your primary weapon - it dictates the timing of your advances and you have to keep it alive, but it's the rest of your forces that do the real fighting and you have to build them up fast to the point where they're capable of it.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 11:12 PM

Is there any way to pull off the trick where you wall the Odin in and keep it from advancing while you build up?

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-04, 11:39 PM

The Glyphstone

2011-06-04, 11:56 PM

I...have never seen that trick. It sounds AWESOME, though.

Surely you can just do it after the first base? There's a pretty long rest, you'd have time to rush some SCVs over there and build 3ish barracks.

I actually tried that - the Odin can step over Supply Depots, so they're not tall enough. I was going to try it with Barracks next.

TL Wiki says this:

Bugs
It is possible to block Odin with buildings (supply depots or other buildings) or siege tanks. Blocking off Odin must be done BEFORE he leaves an enemy base.

For example, when Odin destroys the first base, he will walk down and out of it to have a refreshing drink. You can block this exit with 4 supply depots to trap him inside the enemy base. Two things can then happen. 1) Odin will walk right through the buildings. 2) Odin will get stuck and move slightly north against the wall. You will have a higher success of trapping Odin if you use a bigger building (e.g. use barracks instead of supply depots.) Note: Odin will eventually get the ability to walk through buildings. Use this limited time to build tanks to further trap him. Tanks should not completely surround him (he walks though them in that case) but rather leave small path forward and path to the back.

Easiest way to stuck Odin is to start mission with immediate Factory Tech Lab followed by 4 Tanks. First Dominion base has two entrances divided into two sections each. One Tank per section is enough to block Odin inside. It makes Brutal a breeze. Warning: Bases WILL attack you. Because the attacks depend on what base is to be attacked next, it is wise to let Odin kill first base, trap him and then destroy bases 3, 4 and 5. This way your base (or rather Odin trap) will be attacked by rather weak forces from base 2. To avoid possibility of script going wrong, you can leave one building from each base, and then let Odin kill these 'bases' himself.

It may take several tries to get Odin stuck. But when he gets stuck, you are free to build up an army and destroy all of the other bases. Destroying fourth and fifth bases first is advised as with time they'll start producing air units to randomly attack you - there is direct path there blocked with destructible rocks to the right of your base northern exit.

And I was wondering if anyone had ever managed to pull it off.

Inhuman Bot

2011-06-05, 05:08 AM

And I was wondering if anyone had ever managed to pull it off.

I tried it.I had to lift in some barracks from an earlier base, though.

Silverraptor

2011-06-05, 09:01 AM

I did mass wraiths as well with having eventually 8 Science Vessels (Non-energy upgraded Science Vessels). I also expanded to the opponents 2nd base. It went pretty well until I got to the last base. It took a few tries, but I went with dropping a bunch of mules behind the Odin the moment he started going forward. Then I sent my cloaked wraiths in and withdrew to pull their Raven out and shoot it down. Then I took out the tank and air as quickly as possible. I destroyed the battlecrusiers quick enough that only 1 could Yamato the Odin.

Interesting fact. Between Wraiths destroying all the air above and MULEs repairing the odin below, the enemy tends to focus the wraiths. It pretty much turned into me losing all my air in exchange for the enemy to lose all of theirs. And with no air support, the enemy can't do a damn thing to the Odin Nuke.:smallbiggrin:

The Glyphstone

2011-06-05, 10:14 AM

I tried it.I had to lift in some barracks from an earlier base, though.

And it worked?

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-05, 10:19 AM

I actually tried that - the Odin can step over Supply Depots, so they're not tall enough. I was going to try it with Barracks next.

TL Wiki says this:

And I was wondering if anyone had ever managed to pull it off.

Success. I had taken down base 3 and half of 4 before a rogue banshee came by and blow'd up my tank.

I did get cattlebruisers first, though, so I was wandering through the last parts of bases with 6ish cattlebruisers and 3 sci vessels. double yamato on any/all other battlecruisers are kills.

Spartacus

2011-06-05, 11:03 AM

double yamato on any/all other battlecruisers are kills.

Not the Loki, I'd imagine.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-05, 11:14 AM

No, the loki is pretty tough to take down...I lost nearly all of my 8 BCs killing it. Thankfully, I could expand to 2nd base, and rebuild several.

Eldariel

2011-06-05, 11:52 AM

No, the loki is pretty tough to take down...I lost nearly all of my 8 BCs killing it. Thankfully, I could expand to 2nd base, and rebuild several.

I just spammed Wraiths and killed it. Dunno, didn't seem that hard.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-05, 11:56 AM

Wraiths are probably better at doing it. I was spending my gas on BCs tho.

Douglas

2011-06-05, 01:11 PM

I just spammed Yamato at the Loki. I'm not sure it even got to launch. Something like a dozen yamato blasts in rapid succession does a lot.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-05, 01:14 PM

Ok, I'm officially a *******. I followed up my nuketastic spree of Breakout with intentionally allowing all the settlements to be devoured by Zerg on Haven's Fall then going in and cleaning them out. From here, the only thing I can see to top it all off is roasting my own units in the fire wall on Supernova - I may have to pull the banshee smuggle-fire-wall technique to win that, though.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-05, 01:14 PM

I used all 8 BC's energy doing 16 yamatos. It was still up and going.

Eldariel

2011-06-05, 01:18 PM

I used all 8 BC's energy doing 16 yamatos. It was still up and going.

Like all legendary opponents (Purifier, Loki, Leviathan off the top of my head), I recall Loki has more HP on Brutal (which would explain the difference).

The Glyphstone

2011-06-05, 05:15 PM

The tank-based wall-off worked - 1 tank in each of the gates to Base 1 kept the Odin penned up for 35 minutes. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to kill enough enemy production structures before they started spawning Battlecruisers, with Raven support to tear through my Wraiths and then march on my base. Going to set EoD aside for now, and try to get battlecruisers of my own to attack the 5th base with (Wraiths are too fragile to beat up the missile turrets/Vikings there, and they rebuild too fast).

Smiling Knight

2011-06-05, 06:06 PM

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-05, 06:08 PM

I'm disappointed in Idra vs MC rematch. He really needs to just suck it up and learn to play ZvP properly instead of complaining about it and doing random cheeses.

Silverraptor

2011-06-05, 07:03 PM

I'm disappointed in Idra vs MC rematch. He really needs to just suck it up and learn to play ZvP properly instead of complaining about it and doing random cheeses.

Seriously, this was the first time I watched Idra in a tournament and I was not impressed at all. He did not look like a pro player at all.

Weezer

2011-06-05, 07:55 PM

Seriously, this was the first time I watched Idra in a tournament and I was not impressed at all. He did not look like a pro player at all.

He gets angry, which severely impairs his play. Also he often feels like he does things that make it so he "should" win and gets pissy when another player counters them. On his good days he is easily the best western zerg, but sadly he is extremely unprofessional and has a habit of blaming his losses on others, and because of that he is one of my least favorite progamers.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-05, 07:57 PM

In terms of skill, he's the best player around.

In terms of professionalism, he's one of the worst, which is why he doesn't place up to his ability. He could really do with a team who would tell him to get over himself and just learn to deal with crap.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-05, 08:36 PM

"The Banshee Sneak" sounds like a dance.

Silverraptor

2011-06-05, 09:38 PM

dgnslyr

2011-06-05, 09:59 PM

That sounds like a pretty good idea, because it would encourage people to play off-race without worrying about their ladder ranking on their main race.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-05, 10:01 PM

Post it on the official forums. They'll totally listen to you there!:smallsmile:

Suedars

2011-06-05, 10:21 PM

Post it on the official forums. They'll totally listen to you there!:smallsmile:

Sadly this probably is the best way to do things, but your chance of getting noticed and picked up there is quite slim.

As far as Idra, he's probably the most overrated player in SC2. Yes, his macro is impeccable. However even ignoring his tendencies to throw away tournaments on tilt, his play has very little variation, which makes it very easy to predict his play and take necessary precautions. His crisis management is supbar, making him vulnerable to early attacks and unusual strategies. He's not particularly good at early all-ins, and tends to avoid them, meaning his opponents can often cut corners in their builds, helping them get an edge in the macro game. Due to the way he practices, he's terrible at playing from behind and playing in unusual spots.

He's like the ultimate "no rush 20 minutes" player. If the game consists only of macroing up and attacking he's incredible, but throw any disruption in and he's subpar. Even then, he's been whining about ZvP for 6 months now, and still hasn't figured out the matchup. As good as his macro is, you can find macro inclined players like Nestea and Min who are just as good as him, if not better, at macro, as well as being way more resilient than him.

ShneekeyTheLost

2011-06-05, 11:14 PM

Just as an off-topic comment, I thought we were gonna do a 6 pool reference in this thread? Never heard of a 6-rax before...

Draken

2011-06-05, 11:44 PM

That is actually the number of raxes, not the build order.

Silverraptor

2011-06-05, 11:47 PM

Post it on the official forums. They'll totally listen to you there!:smallsmile:

I doubt they'd listen to me. But we can try... Unless someone more confident then me wants to post it in my stead?

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-06, 12:27 AM

Brutal campaign completed. With 33 HP remaining on the artifact. :smalleek:

The Glyphstone

2011-06-06, 12:49 AM

Brutal campaign completed. With 33 HP remaining on the artifact. :smalleek:

Yowza. Vs. ground or air? I just finished roflstomping Engine of Destruction with Cattlebruisers after successfully pinning the Odin in a cage of Siege Tanks.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-06, 12:57 AM

Winterwind

2011-06-06, 04:49 AM

Hey guys. What is the best way to offer suggestiongs to Blizzard? I got an idea of having seperate ranks as Terran, Zerg, Protoss, and random respectively. Because I want to eventually become a random player and I do not want to be facing Gold and Platinum players when I'm trying out zerg for to first time.:smallfrown:I really hate to be discouraging, and I'd love that idea, too - I really wouldn't want to go up against the players I normally go up against while off-racing - but the problem with it is that it would quadruple the search time for opponents, because it would cut the available pool of players down to one fourth (assuming roughly equal distribution on these "four" races). Considering Blizzard has been going out of its way to cut search times down by tweaking the match-making-system with patches, I really, really doubt they would ever implement a change that increases search times.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-06, 05:44 AM

How would it cut the pool down to one fourth? There'd still be the same distribution of skill....

Runestar

2011-06-06, 05:45 AM

vs Nydus worm, using the 'lol siege tank' strat. Kerrigan glitched and took forever to actually get to my army, and she moved *just* as I was looking away so she took out most of my tanks. Had to rebuild FAST.

Yeah, its kinda funny how she can take down tanks with impunity, yet falls so quickly to a small marine ball. :smallbiggrin:

Winterwind

2011-06-06, 06:08 AM

How would it cut the pool down to one fourth? There'd still be the same distribution of skill.......pardon, my... thinking was completely backwards. Somehow, I made the association "separate MMR for each race" -> "it looks only for players of one specific race", which is obviously nonsense. Demonstrates nicely that one shouldn't be posting when badly underslept, though. :smallredface: :smalltongue:

Yeah, actually, I see absolutely no disadvantages to the system Silverraptor proposed. Should work just fine. And it would be great. :smallsmile:

LordShotGun

2011-06-06, 06:42 AM

vs Nydus worm, using the 'lol siege tank' strat. Kerrigan glitched and took forever to actually get to my army, and she moved *just* as I was looking away so she took out most of my tanks. Had to rebuild FAST.

Did you have planetary fortresses? If you build on of these for the northern highway of attack and two for the southern while having about 5-6 SCVs constantly repairing I have never had her touch my tanks (except with implosion.)

I just destroy my merc facility and place siege tanks in that spot, as many as can fit, and make about 50 marines to kill kerrigan. Works like a charm.

Runestar

2011-06-06, 08:49 AM

Did you have planetary fortresses? If you build on of these for the northern highway of attack and two for the southern while having about 5-6 SCVs constantly repairing I have never had her touch my tanks (except with implosion.)

I never really found them worth it, IMO. They are expensive and kerrigan chews through like like paper mache. I typically just resign myself to losing a few seige tanks every time she attacks; psi disrupters + seige tanks more than suffice in taking care of everything else, assuming you actively use banshees to destroy nydus worms as they pop up.:smallsmile:

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-06, 08:58 AM

I didn't destroy a single nydus. Maxed ups on siege tanks rips through even full nydus swarms, if you position them well.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-06, 09:07 AM

I never really found them worth it, IMO. They are expensive and kerrigan chews through like like paper mache. I typically just resign myself to losing a few seige tanks every time she attacks; psi disrupters + seige tanks more than suffice in taking care of everything else, assuming you actively use banshees to destroy nydus worms as they pop up.:smallsmile:

TL seems to think they're more or less Kerrigan-proof with enough SCV repairmen. Does she Psystorm your SCVs or something?

Runestar

2011-06-06, 09:42 AM

TL seems to think they're more or less Kerrigan-proof with enough SCV repairmen. Does she Psystorm your SCVs or something?

On brutal, my SCVs seem to die very quickly the moment they start reparing the fortress. It has been a while, and I never really paid much attention to whatever exactly was going on (too busy pumping out new units and the like). I guess it could be Kerrigan actively targeting them or something.

I also found them too pricey; if I build them too early, I won't have anything left over to invest in tanks, so I am stuck with an overpriced wall with no means of taking down kerrigan. I can have 8-9 repairing the same fortress, and Kerrigan still eventually razes it into the ground! :smalleek:

Artanis

2011-06-06, 10:01 AM

On brutal, my SCVs seem to die very quickly the moment they start reparing the fortress. It has been a while, and I never really paid much attention to whatever exactly was going on (too busy pumping out new units and the like). I guess it could be Kerrigan actively targeting them or something.
A mass of SCVs crowded around a single building is prime Psi Storm-bait even on Normal. On Brutal - where the enemies actually notice repairing/healing units - workers repairing a high-threat target like a Planetary Fortress are probably the first things to die.

Spartacus

2011-06-06, 10:12 AM

On Brutal the AI focuses repairing/healing units first, like SCVs, Medics, Medivacs and Science Vessels. Only while they are actually healing, mind you, but still.

Silverraptor

2011-06-06, 10:20 AM

So where should I go to get Blizzard's attention in my proposal system?:smallconfused:

Winterwind

2011-06-06, 10:21 AM

Karoht

2011-06-06, 10:31 AM

Seriously, this was the first time I watched Idra in a tournament and I was not impressed at all. He did not look like a pro player at all.

News flash, Idra isn't. He's a brat, and a bully to boot. He is not a pro-gamer as there is nothing pro or professional about him.

Hey guys. What is the best way to offer suggestiongs to Blizzard? I got an idea of having seperate ranks as Terran, Zerg, Protoss, and random respectively. Because I want to eventually become a random player and I do not want to be facing Gold and Platinum players when I'm trying out zerg for to first time.:smallfrown:Fantastic suggestion. Try the forum first, if not there is an email address, feedback @ something . something though I'm not sure how well read that is. Go to the blizzard main site, click support, type in feedback in the search. It might find something.

Douglas

2011-06-06, 10:39 AM

My Brutal All-In win was with 3 bunkers loaded with 18 marines at each of the two entry points, plus about half a dozen flame turrets, one of those zerg-slowing buildings, a big pile of tanks, and a swarm of banshees for temporary reinforcement and nydus worm killing. I dealt with Kerrigan by getting her attention with the banshee swarm, provoking the psi storm, and moving out of the way instantly so they don't die to it - unlike tanks, banshees are highly mobile. Once the storm is out and on cooldown, just pound away. The banshee double-shot helps get through Kerrigan's per-hit damage cap, and if you do it close enough to your base the 18 marines in bunkers help a lot too.

Thiyr

2011-06-06, 11:04 AM

Artanis

2011-06-06, 01:29 PM

A quick question that I just realized I didn't know the answer to: when talking about upgrades, what order is the notation in? For example, if the Protoss have L3 weapons, L2 armor, and L1 shields, would we say they're 3-2-1 or 2-3-1 or what? :smallredface:

I ended up winning brutal all-in by means of the PF/seigetank method vs wors. Put my PFs at the top of the plateau, where the artifact was, and walled in the holes that inevitably get left open with whatever possible. Then tanks against the bottom of the cliff wall between those two ramps up to the artifact. Ocasionally things went for the tanks, but normally they either died outright or they went for the PFs. Couldn't deal with leaving the nyduses down though, so I 2 groups of banshees to deal with them. Just save early and save often...And good luck if you're trying to get aces high at the same time...unless i'm mixing that up with how i did Aces High. But then again, aces high was harder to pull off a difficulty lower, so -shrug-

Wait, Aces High was harder on a lower difficulty? :smallconfused:

The Glyphstone

2011-06-06, 01:30 PM

Pretty sure it's weapon/armor/(shield), the order they're in the Forge/Engineering/EvoChamber panel. So it'd be 3/2/1 for Weapons 3, Armor 2, Shields 1

^I think he means Aces High was harder on Hard than free use of the nova was on Brutal.

Artanis

2011-06-06, 01:32 PM

Pretty sure it's weapon/armor/(shield), the order they're in the Forge/Engineering/EvoChamber panel. So it'd be 3/2/1 for Weapons 3, Armor 2, Shields 1
Thanks. That's what I thought it was, but the unit info panel reverses weapons and armor, so I wasn't quite sure. :smallsmile:

^I think he means Aces High was harder on Hard than free use of the nova was on Brutal.
That would definitely make more sense.

On a totally unrelated note, after watching some of the MLG stuff, I have to say: good God does LosirA ever use a lot of Banelings :smalleek:

Silverraptor

2011-06-06, 01:40 PM

I'm having trouble getting on the blizzard forum to post my suggestion. Can you guys help me at all?

Nevermind. Found out I was on the wrong Forum. Carry on.

LordShotGun

2011-06-06, 02:12 PM

I found the Planetary Fortress defense worked rather well on Brutal (with about 6-7 SCVs per fortress, two fortresses per side, and dozens upon dozens of Tanks in the background, plus a bunch of Banshees flying around to snipe Nydus Worms). I'd micro the SCVs back whenever Kerrigan used a storm and keep at least two medics per fortress on stand-by to heal the SCVs and each other when necessary; usually still lost a bunch of SCVs, but overall, it worked pretty well.

This is exactly what I do. It helps that the Pforts can produce their own SCVs so I always stay on top of production that way. Also, I never run short of minerals, its always gas that constrains my production so Pforts are not really that expensive IMO.

Eldariel

2011-06-06, 02:28 PM

I ended up winning brutal all-in by means of the PF/seigetank method vs wors. Put my PFs at the top of the plateau, where the artifact was, and walled in the holes that inevitably get left open with whatever possible. Then tanks against the bottom of the cliff wall between those two ramps up to the artifact. Ocasionally things went for the tanks, but normally they either died outright or they went for the PFs. Couldn't deal with leaving the nyduses down though, so I 2 groups of banshees to deal with them. Just save early and save often...And good luck if you're trying to get aces high at the same time...unless i'm mixing that up with how i did Aces High. But then again, aces high was harder to pull off a difficulty lower, so -shrug-

Aces High can be done on Brutal, though it's definitely an uphill battle without Hive Mind Emulator Abuse (those things are the single most borken thing for All-In; so ridiculously easy to just grab a few Ultras/Broods depending on if you destroyed worms or air, and watch the slaughter). I got it without any Novas used; then again, that seems like the optimal strategy anyways to speed up the process of it charging. Really, either Psi Disruptor or Hive Mind Emulator makes the map ridic easy (tho Psi Disruptor is far better against ground only).

Douglas

2011-06-06, 02:37 PM

Aces High can be done on Brutal, though it's definitely an uphill battle without Hive Mind Emulator Abuse (those things are the single most borken thing for All-In; so ridiculously easy to just grab a few Ultras/Broods depending on if you destroyed worms or air, and watch the slaughter). I got it without any Novas used; then again, that seems like the optimal strategy anyways to speed up the process of it charging. Really, either Psi Disruptor or Hive Mind Emulator makes the map ridic easy (tho Psi Disruptor is far better against ground only).
If you take out air, there is precisely one point in All In where you need air defense - when the giant wave of Overlords comes in to drop troops behind your lines. I discovered through experience that saving the single Aces High activation of the artifact for that both means you can ignore air defense entirely and gets you the 150+ artifact kills for the other achievement at the same time. Those overlords carry a lot of units, and their cargo counts.

The cutscene activation before the mission really starts doesn't count for achievements.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-06, 02:51 PM

What's the best way to do All In Brutal without PForts, and preferably without having your entire defensive line broken to shreds every time Kerrigan attacks (and how often does she attack, anyways?)

Karoht

2011-06-06, 02:59 PM

Does Psi Disruptor and Concussion Grenades (Marauders) stack the slow? I've never tried it myself.

Eldariel

2011-06-06, 03:06 PM

What's the best way to do All In Brutal without PForts, and preferably without having your entire defensive line broken to shreds every time Kerrigan attacks (and how often does she attack, anyways?)

Well, I just had Bunks + Perditions with couple of Hive Mind Emulators, BCs reinforcing the defenses, tons of tanks split across the area (hills, behind the wall, etc.) and Banshee Squadron for wiping out the Worms. Some Rine Patrols with Bunks of Rine/Marauder. Was pretty hectic but got it without using the Nova.

mangosta71

2011-06-06, 03:49 PM

Does Psi Disruptor and Concussion Grenades (Marauders) stack the slow? I've never tried it myself.
Not that I noticed. I had better results with firebats than marauders when I went with the disruptor.

LordShotGun

2011-06-06, 04:39 PM

Not that I noticed. I had better results with firebats than marauders when I went with the disruptor.

Wait...people build firebats? I mean, with the campaign upgrades they SEEM awesome, I just never ran into enough zerglings that stim marines could not handle...and they suck versus everything else.

Roaches and Ultras=armored
Anything Flying=LoLz
Hydras out range and out DPS them.

If only they still had stim.

Spartacus

2011-06-06, 04:42 PM

They still deal pretty good damage, and they're probably the best tanks.

arguskos

2011-06-06, 04:46 PM

They still deal pretty good damage, and they're probably the best tanks.
Juggernaut Armor+3 ups=Firebats that cannot die. Seriously. I've tanked Firebats through all sorts of insanity in the campaign, thanks to Juggernaut Armor being flat-out amazing. Something about having 6 armor with 3 ups as an infantry unit seems good. :smallcool:

Hell, one of my favorite things to do in the campaign is to get the Firebat upgrades then play Outbreak and instead of turrets or bunkers, just use walls of firebats and medics with a few marauders to kill the infested marines. It works surprisingly well on every difficulty except for Brutal.

Eldariel

2011-06-06, 05:11 PM

Juggernaut Armor+3 ups=Firebats that cannot die. Seriously. I've tanked Firebats through all sorts of insanity in the campaign, thanks to Juggernaut Armor being flat-out amazing. Something about having 6 armor with 3 ups as an infantry unit seems good. :smallcool:

Hell, one of my favorite things to do in the campaign is to get the Firebat upgrades then play Outbreak and instead of turrets or bunkers, just use walls of firebats and medics with a few marauders to kill the infested marines. It works surprisingly well on every difficulty except for Brutal.

Seriously, Firebats with Juggs are like mini-Ultralisks. They are good. I played through basically all the early Z missions with Firebat+Marine+Medic (they work superb in Outbreak, for example) and used them a bit as big fat marinekillers against Terran early on too (then I got Vultures and stopped using non-Vulture/Tank units whenever I could; that is, every mission without superstrict time limits, and heavy air presence from the opposition).

The classic BW Terran Mech is GODLIKE in the campaign. Goliath/Vulture/Tank literally destroys EVERYTHING super-efficiently. And all you need is Factories. And since you get Tech Reactors anyways, you don't even need that many of those. I'm almost tempted to run a Let's Play of SCII re-templating Raynor as Mech Commander and whining how all he gets are silly Powered Armors in the beginning and rushing the missions giving us real toolz.

mangosta71

2011-06-06, 05:25 PM

Wait...people build firebats? I mean, with the campaign upgrades they SEEM awesome, I just never ran into enough zerglings that stim marines could not handle...and they suck versus everything else.

Roaches and Ultras=armored
Anything Flying=LoLz
Hydras out range and out DPS them.

If only they still had stim.
Range upgrade + the range increase for being in a bunker + the bunker upgrades = HUGE areas of effect for those flamethrowers. At that point they outrange hydras, and an SCV slaved to static defense repairs (behind the bunker, so the hydra has to advance further into the flames to even take a shot at it) keeps them shooting all day long.

Volug

2011-06-06, 06:19 PM

Eldariel

2011-06-06, 06:53 PM

I didn't want to start another Starcraft (1) thread for this, so I'll post it here if that's alright.

This if course regards Starcraft, the original. I can't play numbah 2 on my laptop so I settled with getting the first game and Broodwars for only $10 at gamestop!

Of course the learning curve is KILLING ME (and it's just bots)... If anyone can contact me on steam for a game of starcraft 1 online (Steam is [GitP] MasatoHyuga) and just go somewhat easy on me... Or other noobs, either is fine, I'd like that. Just so I can get some replays.

Or just some place to give me tips. I DO play a lot of Age of Empires 3, I never won a game online there either :\ But I could at least beat the bots at high difficulties on that.

I only recently have been able to beat a bot (I play Zerg BTW). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mza0pj_wHqk

Quick pointers:
- While the build you used works here, because AI is pretty meh, I'd focus on learning a more economic build. This build you used is what is called "all-in"; if you don't severely hurt your opponent, you're pretty far behind and don't really have game anymore.
- More precisely, in this build you get your Spawning Pool way too early. This is huge since it means your economy is behind by a ton. If you rush and hurt opponent, it can win you the game (you can always beat computers with Rushes since computer doesn't know how to handle them), but a solid, crisp gameplan tends to allow you to win way more (since it allows you to do anything, rather than one easily counterable gimmick) than getting good at rushing.

With this in mind, few tips on general Zerg-play: You don't need the Pool before enemy can attack you with a significant force (Drones can ward off a single Marine, though Zealots and Zerglings tend to require a response in kind) and the map distance generally gives you enough leeway to survive early aggression, especially if opponent is at a distant position (you scout them with the two first Overlords, of course).

The default build order for Z is to get 9-10 Drones (10th you can get by starting Extractor, building the Drone and cancelling the Extractor as soon as you have began building the Drone; this gets you to 10/9 supply), Overlord and THEN building full 3 Drones and at 12-13 supply the second Hatchery + Pool, or Pool and then second Hatchery (order varies).

You generally either use the second Hatchery to get to the entrance of your base (you need second Hatchery for extra Larvae anyways) or at your natural expansion. Then you put up defenses at your expansion (generally Sunken or two, and as few lings as you can afford once your Pool finishes, though obviously err on the side of caution), begin harvesting gas (postpone this if you get attacked and put extra defenses up; your Overlords should be scouting), get Lair and go from there to your midgame plan (generally, you want Lurkers and/or Mutalisks with Speedlings [Always Research Ling Speed!] against Terran, Hydras and maybe Lurkers against Protoss (Mutas can work) and Mutalisks + Zerglings against Zerg).

Then you proceed to keep taking more bases (Zerg should generally be 1 base ahead of a Terran or Protoss opponent; against Zerg you generally should just mass Mutas/Lings with all your money since expanding more than once is a death wish unless they turtle up with Spore/Sunken Colonies), controlling key areas with Lurkers and eventually teching into your endgame composition and throwing maxed food armies at your opponent's expansions until you win (and obviously defending appropriately).

Zerg-play is generally very map control-oriented with Zerglings, Lurkers and Mutalisks being some of the best map control units in the game Lurkers being massively efficient on defense on top of ramps or behind bridges, for example, and Mutalisks requiring huge defenses in base and completely wrecking bases if the opponent moves out too early (with good unit control). Zerglings do the same as Mutas; just try not to engage enemy armies directly unless you have vast numeric superiority since pound-for-pound, Terran and Protoss armies outgun yours.

Oh, and if enemy goes air (like always in Zerg vs. Zerg), you get Scourges to control air; one Scourge per Muta and your own Mutas wipe them out. Two Scourges per terran Science Vessel (your bane) and one per observer (thanks to Overlords, wiping out Observers and abusing Lurkers to control area is an exceedingly viable tactic against Protoss).

Of course, lategame Ultralisks form the other half of the dreaded Ultraling combination that's very efficient against Protoss being superfast and rushing bases down like it were Bison's Tuesday and even fighting efficiently (basically, you use them to attack wherever the opponent is NOT defending and then start ramming into their army when you get nice flanks, Defiler support or just sufficient economic advantage to win), and there's the Defiler which has Dark Swarm and Plague, two spells that the Terrans absolutely dread (Plague also wrecks Protoss and Dark Swarm is v. good for taking out expansions defended by Cannons, and it makes Archons and Dragoons very inefficient; Plague is also good against Zerg but getting to Hive tech without dying in that match-up is HARD).

And few interesting points about Dark Swarm:
Only melee units can hit in it outside splash damage. From Terran, that means only Firebat (which dies to Lurkers in second). Burrowed units don't take splash damage unless it lands directly on top of them; this means burrowed Lurkers can literally hold the entire Terran army away under Dark Swarm unless there are some units behind the Lurkers for enemy tanks to splash off on. Abilities like Irradiate, Spider Mine, Yamato Gun and Nuke still hit, of course, but the latter three are very hard to land (well, in the case of Yamato just getting BCs against Z and not losing them to swarms of Scourges is hard) and the former is...an annoyance you'll never get rid of

Reavers and Psi Storm make this way less efficient against Protoss, however (that and Zealots not being made of paper like Firebats). It's still exceedingly strong since Dragoons and Archons are a big part of Protoss strength against Zerg and Archons are extremely diminished (only their splash works) and Dragoons are negated under the swarm. Also, again, fully upgraded Zerglings destroy bases SUPERFAST so Swarming to protect them from the cannons allows even just a handful of Zerglings to destroy an entire base.

I suggest trying to just get basics of your build down against the AI and then trying to play real humans since the AI falls into patterns and doesn't counter rushes meaning it can lead you into some very bad habits that are detrimental to improving your mechanical gameplay.

Volug

2011-06-06, 07:02 PM

*snip*

This helps loads, and is exactly what I wanted. Thanks loads, I'll go experiment some.

Eldariel

2011-06-06, 07:06 PM

This helps loads, and is exactly what I wanted. Thanks loads, I'll go experiment some.

If you want to, I can also try to fire up BW again (haven't played in about a year tho) and catch you. Which server do you play on?

Volug

2011-06-06, 07:18 PM

I signed up on USWest with BW.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-06, 07:21 PM

I suggest trying to just get basics of your build down against the AI and then trying to play real humans since the AI falls into patterns and doesn't counter rushes meaning it can lead you into some very bad habits that are detrimental to improving your mechanical gameplay.

the AI also cheats like a crazy man in SC1 on anything except Easy difficulty, so it can be good practice - if you can win against an opponent who presciently knows exactly what you're building and when, you'll have an advantage against human enemies who have to do things like scout.

Eldariel

2011-06-06, 07:31 PM

the AI also cheats like a crazy man in SC1 on anything except Easy difficulty, so it can be good practice - if you can win against an opponent who presciently knows exactly what you're building and when, you'll have an advantage against human enemies who have to do things like scout.

There are no difficulty levels in BW Skirmishes O.o And the AI cheats in map knowledge, to be sure, but it doesn't cheat resource wise and has no clue how to play so while it has some advantages, it's also ridiculously, ridiculously bad at the game as it doesn't know the basic build orders, let alone standard counters.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-06, 07:45 PM

There are no difficulty levels in BW Skirmishes O.o

maybe I didn't play enough Skirmishes - I spent a vast amount of time playing with the Map Editor though, making scenarios, and you could definitely set complexity levels for the AI there.

Eldariel

2011-06-06, 07:50 PM

maybe I didn't play enough Skirmishes - I spent a vast amount of time playing with the Map Editor though, making scenarios, and you could definitely set complexity levels for the AI there.

There's 3 campaign AI levels, all of which are utter trash far as play goes (seriously, put a toddler at the computer and he'll eventually trash a Campaign AI run in multiplayer). The only one you can play against in Skirmishes is Custom AI tho. That one is competent for certain definitions on competent; that is, it can beat people with worse mechanics but far as smart playing goes, it's hopeless (and it doesn't micro).

EDIT: Btw, Masato, which nick you sign up under on US West? I added "MasatoHyuga" to /f list as a wild guess; I run under Eldariel. I'll try and catch you online if you happen there.

Volug

2011-06-06, 08:04 PM

EDIT: Btw, Masato, which nick you sign up under on US West? I added "MasatoHyuga" to /f list as a wild guess; I run under Eldariel. I'll try and catch you online if you happen there.

You guessed correctly. Though I won't be able to play online untill about tomorrow however.

Eldariel

2011-06-06, 08:28 PM

You guessed correctly. Though I won't be able to play online untill about tomorrow however.

*shrug* It's fine; I'll see if I can catch you then.

D_Lord

2011-06-06, 09:32 PM

You can put me in the list, North America DLord character code 884

The Glyphstone

2011-06-06, 10:39 PM

To divert the topic back to SC2 for a minute - I need spending advice. I'm currently about to do Shatter The Sky to knock out air on All In, but I've still got 615,000 to spend. Stuff I can pick from:

Marauder Mercenaries
Goliath Mercenaries
Missile Turret upgrades
SCV Team-up Building
Reaper upgrades
Hellion upgrades
Vulture upgrades
Goliath upgrades
Diamondback upgrades
Medivac upgrades
Wraith upgrades
Viking upgrades
Battlecruiser upgrades
Spectre upgrades
Thor upgrades

The only ones I can see really being useful are Spectres, and maybe Thors - Kerrigan will eat BC's for breakfast with her instant-kill blast, and I intend to be keeping my organics safely inside bunkers whenever possible.

Kyeudo

2011-06-06, 11:06 PM

Marauder Mercenaries
Goliath Mercenaries
SCV Team-up Building
Reaper upgrades
Hellion upgrades
Vulture upgrades
Wraith upgrades
Spectre upgrades

The above are what I'd recomend. Lots of aoe and stealth options with some emergency reinforcements. Hope you have the Hive Mind Emulator. I put together a 200 food army of Zerg units to deal with Kerrigan. Was laughably easy.

mangosta71

2011-06-06, 11:29 PM

Mercenaries are good for instant reinforcements in an emergency. The viking upgrades are nice for Shatter the Sky, but won't come into play in All In since you're taking out the air. For All In, the Vulture upgrades let you mine the **** out of your approaches. You can also cover your base in mines so that the overlord drop meets sudden fiery oblivion without using the artifact. The battlecruiser shield won't save them from Kerrigan's oneshot ability, though the AA missile battery can be useful during Shatter the Sky. The Thor ress upgrade is good (they get back up after the oneshot), and while I think Kerrigan's shield stops most of the damage from the cannon the waves of lings and hydras and roaches lack that protection.

The Spectre upgrades, like most of the ones you have listed, are much better earlier in the campaign. All In is too much of a turtlefest for the perma-stealth to really shine (unless you're building lots of nukes and sending Spectres on preemptive defense missions). But remember that Kerrigan is a detector, so they'll need to avoid her.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-06, 11:38 PM

The above are what I'd recomend. Lots of aoe and stealth options with some emergency reinforcements. Hope you have the Hive Mind Emulator. I put together a 200 food army of Zerg units to deal with Kerrigan. Was laughably easy.

Sadly, I went with Psi Disrupters this time around.

Runestar

2011-06-06, 11:39 PM

To divert the topic back to SC2 for a minute - I need spending advice. I'm currently about to do Shatter The Sky to knock out air on All In, but I've still got 615,000 to spend. Stuff I can pick from:

Think you don't need any of them. I used only 6 units in the final mission - tanks, marines+medics and banshees, scvs and science vessels.

You may as well spend your credits (rather than let them go to waste), but I can assure you that it won't really make a difference to your game.:smalltongue:

ShneekeyTheLost

2011-06-07, 09:02 AM

Sadly, I went with Psi Disrupters this time around.Vikings with upgrades slaughter the big nasty in Shatter The Sky. Do so.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-07, 09:13 AM

I think you don't need any of them. Maaaybe the Spectre upgrades if they can stun kerrigan, but I did shatter the sky with a big MMM ball for the first and air base, BC with no upgrades (though 3/3 in game)/Sci vessels for the ground base, and both for the main base.

Just get the 'real' upgrades, the armory and Engi bay ones, and crush things. You should find that a handful of BCs and an MMM ball will make the leviathan go kaboom pretty darn fast, without impacting on your ability to blow up platforms.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 10:09 AM

I ended up doing STS without buying any upgrades. It was hilarious, really - the Leviathan mauled through two dozen Vikings without barely half damage, then I reloaded and tried again with my MMM ball, and it killed maybe six marines before dying. 150 food worth of M/M/M rocks, no matter what you throw in its way (except banelings - stupid banelings).

So I'm up to All In with all that money left to spend, and it's looking like none of it will really matter?

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-07, 10:12 AM

Nope. Go for the achievements. :smalltongue:

mangosta71

2011-06-07, 10:14 AM

I usually rock Shatter the Sky with fully upgraded vikings and banshees. The vent thingies are big enough that all of the banshee rockets hit them, so they go down in a hurry. I've never found the battlecruiser upgrades to be very useful. In fact, I find that battlecruisers themselves aren't very useful aside from the mission that you get them.

Vikings to form an anti-air screen, enough banshees will blow a hole in the rings of spore colonies before you lose any (they're usually thinnest if you circle to the far side of the base), then they can cloak and hit the vent while your vikings withdraw. Micro it properly and you can pull the mission off without any losses at the bases, though the Leviathan will likely wreck a number of the vikings you send to intercept it even with perfect micro.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 10:16 AM

Nope. Go for the achievements. :smalltongue:

Have them already from my LP. I want that Sarah Kerrigan portrait, so I'm making this as easy as possible.:smallbiggrin:

Battlecruisers are lulzy in pretty much any mission "before" you get them - if you rush to Maw of the Void then go back and do the side missions, a pack of BCs just wreck everything - but they're not very good in the Char missions. The exception is when you do a Hercules/Medivac Shuffle over the ridge to the Nydus Worms in Gates of Hell instead of taking the long route through two bases...the BCs you get from a pod and Jackson's Revenge make mincemeat of the handful of Spore Crawlers protecting the ridge.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-07, 10:31 AM

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 10:38 AM

No, I meant the achievements for getting all upgrades of type X, or all mercenaries unlocked, etc.

I'm on an achievement run now. 75% achievements. Breakout next....Hrm. Gonna have to save a lot when I think I did a section fast.

Oh. Got those already too. All I'm missing is the Brutal Completionist, HUIRN, and the Lost Viking achievements.

Douglas

2011-06-07, 10:44 AM

Lost Viking achievements.
Have you tried out the windows script I posted a few threads back for that? Constant max rate of fire without having to hammer the keyboard endlessly and probably interfering with pressing two arrow keys for diagonal movement helps a lot.

Karoht

2011-06-07, 10:47 AM

Silverraptor

2011-06-07, 11:03 AM

Artanis

2011-06-07, 11:13 AM

So, I posted this (http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2592858004) in the Starcraft 2 Forum. However, it looks like I got trolled by a Diamond level player who just told me to buy 4 separate accounts instead.:smallfrown:

You got off easy.

And no, I don't have any respect for the official forums. I haven't since Operation CWALA got kicked off the boards before WC3 came out.

Winterwind

2011-06-07, 11:14 AM

So, I posted this (http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2592858004) in the Starcraft 2 Forum. However, it looks like I got trolled by a Diamond level player who just told me to buy 4 separate accounts instead.:smallfrown:As far as the SC2 forums go, that was an extremely friendly and constructive response. I'm not even kidding. Those forums are such a den of scum and villainy, it's incredible. :smallwink:

EDIT: Gah, Spectre'd.

Karoht

2011-06-07, 11:29 AM

So, I posted this (http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2592858004) in the Starcraft 2 Forum. However, it looks like I got trolled by a Diamond level player who just told me to buy 4 separate accounts instead.:smallfrown:
Report the post, respond by pointing out that having to purchase 4 different accounts is not a solution. On the plus side, as long as the thread doesn't get locked, someone important might view your post.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 01:25 PM

arguskos

2011-06-07, 01:44 PM

As far as the SC2 forums go, that was an extremely friendly and constructive response. I'm not even kidding. Those forums are such a den of scum and villainy, it's incredible. :smallwink:

EDIT: Gah, Spectre'd.
Yeah, really. The SC2 forums are basically the scum of the earth given physical form. Avoid them at all costs.

mangosta71

2011-06-07, 01:47 PM

Have you tried out the windows script I posted a few threads back for that? Constant max rate of fire without having to hammer the keyboard endlessly and probably interfering with pressing two arrow keys for diagonal movement helps a lot.
I tried it. I found that it caused bugs to appear (I don't remember specifics as it's been a while, but I do recall that after playing one session of LV with it on I switched it off) - besides, it's easy enough for me to use the arrow keys with one hand while my other hand covers the trigger.

Douglas

2011-06-07, 03:10 PM

I tried it. I found that it caused bugs to appear (I don't remember specifics as it's been a while, but I do recall that after playing one session of LV with it on I switched it off) - besides, it's easy enough for me to use the arrow keys with one hand while my other hand covers the trigger.
Ah, but you can shoot faster - and by quite a substantial margin - by pressing the space bar repeatedly rather than holding it down. Plus, some keyboards have trouble reporting the space bar and two separate arrow keys all at the same time, which makes shooting while moving diagonally difficult or impossible. If the script is handling the space bar, the keyboard only needs to report the arrow keys and I've never encountered a keyboard that can't at least handle any two keys in combination.

Cynan Machae

2011-06-07, 03:15 PM

While I agree on the SC2 blizz forums being pretty bad, the only time I posted there was in tech support and got a response by a blue in under 2 min o.o (yes i was quite surprised)

I want to play BW again because of all this talk ><

mangosta71

2011-06-07, 03:32 PM

Ah, but you can shoot faster - and by quite a substantial margin - by pressing the space bar repeatedly rather than holding it down.
Well, yeah. I never said I was just holding the space bar down - that would be silly and make the boss fights absurdly long.

Plus, some keyboards have trouble reporting the space bar and two separate arrow keys all at the same time, which makes shooting while moving diagonally difficult or impossible. If the script is handling the space bar, the keyboard only needs to report the arrow keys and I've never encountered a keyboard that can't at least handle any two keys in combination.
Only issue I've seen with that is the left arrow and the space bar. And only when I'm holding the spare bar when I press the left arrow - if I'm holding the left arrow, the space bar works fine without interrupting my movement. The left arrow works fine if I'm pulsing the space bar for maximum rate of fire.

As long as we're talking about Lost Viking, has anyone found a use for plasma missiles? They seem like total crap compared to the double launchers.

Douglas

2011-06-07, 03:41 PM

Well, yeah. I never said I was just holding the space bar down - that would be silly and make the boss fights absurdly long.
And you're fine with pressing the space bar that rapidly for half an hour or more? I'm not, and that's how long it takes to get the achievements.

Only issue I've seen with that is the left arrow and the space bar. And only when I'm holding the spare bar when I press the left arrow - if I'm holding the left arrow, the space bar works fine without interrupting my movement. The left arrow works fine if I'm pulsing the space bar for maximum rate of fire.
The details of which combinations of keys conflict vary from keyboard to keyboard, I believe. Some people may have no problem at all with space bar + arrow keys, and others might be unable to get any combination of 3 of them to work.

As long as we're talking about Lost Viking, has anyone found a use for plasma missiles? They seem like total crap compared to the double launchers.
Yes: boss fights. And lieutenant fights. And in general fights against anything that's tougher than the bottom rank mooks. They do more damage against single targets than the spread shot weapon does. Spread shot is really only better against large waves of many enemies, and a pair of drones takes care of those just fine without taking your weapon slot.

Eldariel

2011-06-07, 03:54 PM

Yes: boss fights. And lieutenant fights. And in general fights against anything that's tougher than the bottom rank mooks. They do more damage against single targets than the spread shot weapon does. Spread shot is really only better against large waves of many enemies, and a pair of drones takes care of those just fine without taking your weapon slot.

Depends. E.g. Terratron is very easy to constantly fire with Side Lasers while e.g. the Laser attack forces you to cease Plasma attacks for a while. Leviathan also has some patterns that make it hard to land Plasma shots constantly. While Plasma still finishes them faster, the difference isn't major enough IMHO to warrant switching. I used Side Lasers throughout the thingy and never looked back. If looking for 100% kills on all levels from the start (for max score), I find them invaluable.

Silverraptor

2011-06-07, 08:04 PM

And....I was kidding about posting in the SC2 forums.

I would like to ask that when someone is looking for a good way for offering a suggestion idea to blizzard and is actively looking for a convient way to contact them, please don't have several people say something about going to what can be mistaken as a reasonable website for anyone with no knowledge of the terrible creatures that haven't seen the light of day that dwell within.:smallannoyed:

Now that I got that off my chest, is there a troll-free way to contact Blizzard about my idea in some way?

Gamerlord

2011-06-07, 08:22 PM

Just finished the campaign.
Spoilers:
Brilliant.
Completed the campaign in what I estimate was around 18-20 hours on Normal difficulty. Think I lowered the difficulty for two missions however, certain I lowered it for one. Tychus betraying me was not much of a surprise. My favorite of the campaign-only units probably is tied between Diamondback and Medic.The final mission was great and a good challenge, near the end things got so hairy I doubted I would last another minute. Hope to see the tales of Zeratul and Raynor developed more in HOTS, even if Kerrigan is the star. I can see in HOTS a terran mini-campaigns starring Raynor ala the Protoss missions in WoL. Overall, I wasn't disappointed one bit.

Silverraptor

2011-06-07, 08:35 PM

The only thing that I was a little disappointed in was Kerrigan being "saved", despite the fact she killed Fenix in Brood War, causing Jim Raynor to swear he would be the one to kill her. Although, they did work the plot in such a way that he couldn't kill her if he didn't want to end the universe so, meh.

Interesting story, a guy here at camp with me is playing all the starcraft campaigns over again. And in the beginning of one of the zerg mission briefing, the Overmind was talking about how the protoss and the zerg shall be combined together. I have to say, well damn. I did not know Blizzard planned so far ahead as to think of the hybrid concept all the way from before Starcraft 1 came out. I'm actually impressed,:smallsmile: which probably erase any sort of dissappointment I might have had with the ending of Starcraft 2. (Which wasn't that much, since I enjoyed to game for the most part.)

Thiyr

2011-06-07, 08:47 PM

Didn't remember that, but I did remember the bonus mission in BW where zeratul finds the hybrid, so putting it back a little further doesn't surprise me.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 08:53 PM

Runestar

2011-06-07, 09:09 PM

The only thing that I was a little disappointed in was Kerrigan being "saved", despite the fact she killed Fenix in Brood War, causing Jim Raynor to swear he would be the one to kill her. Although, they did work the plot in such a way that he couldn't kill her if he didn't want to end the universe so, meh.

Actually, I feel that even at the start of the story, Jim was moping more like some lovesick puppy than a hardened fighter obsessed with revenge. It is like he had already forgotten what happened to Fenix. :smallconfused:

Now that I got that off my chest, is there a troll-free way to contact Blizzard about my idea in some way?

You could consider emailing one of them directly, but I doubt there is a high chance they will pay much attention to your mail.

Thiyr

2011-06-07, 09:23 PM

Well, remember that it's not just the hybrids that are supposed to be a fusion of Protoss and Zerg; it's actually in the Starcraft manual (oh, how I miss old-school game manuals with their lore and stories, instead of the crappy CD-case inserts we get now) with the whole Xel'naga plan for 'purity of form/purity of essence', which is the Overmind's primary directive. The hybrids are a perversion of the Xel'Naga's original plan, and the Overmind is the unwilling executor of said plan.

I thought that whole purity of form/essence was the reason the zerg couldn't assimilate the protoss normally in the first place, which was why the hybrids were such a problem.

edit: and on the front of suggestions to blizzard, if their policy is anything like WotC's is for Magic, I get the feeling they're obligated to ignore it as best as possible due to potential legal issues. perhaps not, different enough markets, but may be issues with that.

Suedars

2011-06-07, 09:33 PM

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 09:33 PM

I thought that whole purity of form/essence was the reason the zerg couldn't assimilate the protoss normally in the first place, which was why the hybrids were such a problem.

edit: and on the front of suggestions to blizzard, if their policy is anything like WotC's is for Magic, I get the feeling they're obligated to ignore it as best as possible due to potential legal issues. perhaps not, different enough markets, but may be issues with that.

Well, the Zerg actually found the Protoss well after the Xel'Naga were all dead and eaten, which kind of screwed up the whole purity plan - the Xel'naga were supposed to hand-guide the two races to their pinnacle and then merge then, not create a race of superpsychic elitists and another of galactic locusts. They were eaten because the Dark One corrupted the Overmind, and removed the only people who could stop the 'kill the universe' plan...until Kerrigan was born.

Eldariel

2011-06-07, 09:37 PM

Well, the Zerg actually found the Protoss well after the Xel'Naga were all dead and eaten, which kind of screwed up the whole purity plan - the Xel'naga were supposed to hand-guide the two races to their pinnacle and then merge then, not create a race of superpsychic elitists and another of galactic locusts. They were eaten because the Dark One corrupted the Overmind, and removed the only people who could stop the 'kill the universe' plan...until Kerrigan was born.

Or that's the present truth. As always, Blizzard's truths are everchanging.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 09:41 PM

Or that's the present truth. As always, Blizzard's truths are everchanging.

They're fairly consistent with Starcraft lore, really. Neither BW or SC2 really retconned anything (except the death of Tassadar) so much as elaborated on things left vague or incomplete. The way they manage to preserve continuity actually impresses me to a degree...things like being unable to manufacture Dragoons anymore, so they slap extra armor and force shields on the surviving ones and call them Immortals.

Heck, even their other properties (including a certain MMO left unnamed) get more flack than they deserve for 'lolore' retcons...the biggest and most egregious one is most well-known because the lead designer openly said 'yeah, we screwed up cause I didn't read my own fluff, but let's go with the new version because it's cooler'.

Silverraptor

2011-06-07, 10:07 PM

Well, how did the wow suggesters get their ideas heard? Or is the WoW part of the forum more friendly then SC2?

The Glyphstone

2011-06-07, 10:09 PM

Silverraptor

2011-06-07, 10:10 PM

Heck no. It just substitutes the elitism of SC2 for general dumbness. The Humor section is loaded with gold mines, though, some of which have been canonized in the strangest places (Alamo's Guide To Druids in the TCG, for example).

Great! Second question answered! Avoid Blizzard forums at the cost of your sanity.

Now, back to how to ask them directly. Lets all ponder on this for a little while longer...

arguskos

2011-06-07, 10:22 PM

Great! Second question answered! Avoid Blizzard forums at the cost of your sanity.

Now, back to how to ask them directly. Lets all ponder on this for a little while longer...
Email them directly. They have email lines. That's... about it? I guess you could snailmail them if you really wanted to be like that.

Suedars

2011-06-07, 10:22 PM

Great! Second question answered! Avoid Blizzard forums at the cost of your sanity.

Now, back to how to ask them directly. Lets all ponder on this for a little while longer...

There is no way to contact them directly, otherwise they'd be flooded by a bunch of idiots whining for every single unit and strategy in the game to be nerfed and/or buffed to ridiculous levels. Posting in their suggestions forums is the best shot you've got. If the community bugs you, you don't have to stick around after you post your suggestion.

Silverraptor

2011-06-07, 10:27 PM

There is no way to contact them directly, otherwise they'd be flooded by a bunch of idiots whining for every single unit and strategy in the game to be nerfed and/or buffed to ridiculous levels. Posting in their suggestions forums is the best shot you've got. If the community bugs you, you don't have to stick around after you post your suggestion.

Well, I didn't know where to post that suggestion, so I decided on the multiplayer section. Is there a better spot for me to post that that will increase the odds of blizzard employees seeing it?

dgnslyr

2011-06-07, 10:41 PM

Considering the relative difficulty in sending traditional mail, they might pay a little more attention to it than a forum thread or an email, because the effort needed to send traditional mail filters out the types who either send emails or start threads over silly ideas. Of course, I still don't feel optimistic about a response.

Recaiden

2011-06-07, 11:18 PM

Oh hello SC2 thread.

I would say an actual letter is a better bet than email, but trying them both couldn't hurt, could it?

LordShotGun

2011-06-08, 06:12 AM

Well, I didn't know where to post that suggestion, so I decided on the multiplayer section. Is there a better spot for me to post that that will increase the odds of blizzard employees seeing it?

Oh, uh....I should have said this earlier but your suggestion has already been made and seriously discussed (well as seriously as that forum is capable) but ultimately rejected for reasons of allowing griefers tons of new places to play.

For example, if you are serious about 1v1 but still get your jollies off crushing people, you can play seriously on your main race and goof off on the others.

This leads to the situation of having diamond/platinum players in bronze or silver and even if they are on an off race, they will almost always win, if only due to superior game knowledge (keep making drones, when to expand, what units counter what, ect.)

This would create large amount of unhappiness as people who honestly suck at the game being sometimes faced off with an expert whom they have no hope of beating instead of people of similar skill groups.

mangosta71

2011-06-08, 08:24 AM

The Glyphstone

2011-06-08, 08:47 AM

Seems to me that those high-level players, who have and use all that knowledge, wouldn't stay in the lower leagues.

Of course, an even easier solution is to tell people not to play rated matches with their off races if they're worried about rank. You can practice macro and micro against the AI, after all.

Well, griefing doesn't mean you win - take all the map's resources, pin them in their base but never go for the kill...just make them miserable, then lulzquit for a 'loss' that taught them nothing.

mangosta71

2011-06-08, 09:57 AM

Well, griefing doesn't mean you win - take all the map's resources, pin them in their base but never go for the kill...just make them miserable, then lulzquit for a 'loss' that taught them nothing.
If they're inclined to be douchebags in this manner, they'll do it anyway. There's nothing stopping people from intentionally throwing games in order to stay in the low leagues where they completely outclass their opponents.

Sidenote: In MMOs, these people are called twinks. It's the exact same mentality, ie childishness.

Karoht

2011-06-08, 10:43 AM

Great! Second question answered! Avoid Blizzard forums at the cost of your sanity.

Now, back to how to ask them directly. Lets all ponder on this for a little while longer...
Get into the Beta for Heart of the Swarm, suggest it on the Beta Feeback forums.
Heck, this idea is good enough that I'd be willing to give you MY beta code just to promote it.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-08, 10:50 AM

So, ummm....my macro is literally AWFUL. Is there a good way to practice it? Are there any tricks I can use to help out?

Artanis

2011-06-08, 10:52 AM

Post some replays so that people can see exactly what you're doing wrong :smallwink:

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-08, 11:07 AM

Will play a bunch of games tomorrow and post em up. (This is gonna be embarassing...)

Artanis

2011-06-08, 11:12 AM

You might still have some recent replays available in the "unsaved" sub-folder.

term1nally s1ck

2011-06-08, 11:21 AM

Yup, but the only site I can get to work is down. :smallconfused:

Spartacus

2011-06-08, 11:33 AM

Put them on megaupload.

Winterwind

2011-06-08, 11:35 AM

While micro can be trained rather quickly and efficiently, and there are maps made specifically to train micro (at least, there used to be for SC1; I'm assuming they've already made tons of them for SC2, too, though), macro is almost entirely a practice thing that comes with time. Just keep playing, the more the better, and your macro will improve all on its own. Constantly remembering to build more stuff, placing stuff more quickly and wasting less time, etc., will all become bread and butter that you can pull of reflexively, if you just play enough.

Also, read up on build-orders and practice those, so you get stuff done more efficiently.

Spartacus

2011-06-08, 11:37 AM

Just watched the Funday MondayTuesday. Day[9] was even more strange than usual.

EDIT: I get the impression that he's extremely tired from casting MLG.

The Glyphstone

2011-06-08, 12:11 PM

If they're inclined to be douchebags in this manner, they'll do it anyway. There's nothing stopping people from intentionally throwing games in order to stay in the low leagues where they completely outclass their opponents.

Sidenote: In MMOs, these people are called twinks. It's the exact same mentality, ie childishness.

Off-topic tangent ahead:

I wouldn't necessarily call twinking driven by childishness and griefing. "Twink" itself is a needlessly derogatory term applied to low-level characters with the most optimized/powerful gear for that level. It'd be like calling people who play E6 in D&D 'twinks', because they like to restrict their game to a lower maximum power ceiling.

HalfTangible

2011-06-08, 12:20 PM

Off-topic tangent ahead:

I wouldn't necessarily call twinking driven by childishness and griefing. "Twink" itself is a needlessly derogatory term applied to low-level characters with the most optimized/powerful gear for that level. It'd be like calling people who play E6 in D&D 'twinks', because they like to restrict their game to a lower maximum power ceiling.

Well sure, in an mmo. In a strategy game, the equivalent would be making a new account, playing in the practice league and sticking to tier 1 through the whole game, even when the opponent would have BCs.