** Official Star Craft 2 Multiplayer Thread **

[Fenixgoon]

God fucking damn mutas. WTF am I supposed to do, nothing in my army is that mobile. If I turret up, I'm way behind on production/expansion. And all they do is find the gaps in the turret coverage.

as toss, you can try phoenix, templar (storm), and you will always need stalkers.

as terran, marines/thors. i don't think i've seen anyone go viking against mutas, but they certainly out-range them.

the biggest issue is scouting the mutas. once you know they are coming, countering isn't as bad.

 

[Glitchny]

God fucking damn mutas. WTF am I supposed to do, nothing in my army is that mobile. If I turret up, I'm way behind on production/expansion. And all they do is find the gaps in the turret coverage.

try placing some thors/pockets of marines around the weaker parts of your base and be ready to stim and move them to intercept. If you can hold them at bay for awhile a counter attack can pull them out of your base.

Was never talking about the worker split. I read that same article on TeamLiquid, so I agree it's probably not worth it to manually split the initial 6 workers.

My original post above was only about the first two workers that you build. Since you start with 6 workers and the standard Blizzard maps now have 8 mineral patches, you'll want to rally your first two produced workers directly to the empty mineral patch. This does not require fast nor accurate clicking, so it's something everyone can do.

Ahh gotcha, yea I generally do that, I mean nothing else is happening so it's not too hard to change the rally point.

 

[Glitchny]

So I just played a game vs Toss and damn ghosts are dirty.

36 probes go poof

i uploaded a short vid of it, the nuke drops around 1:10.

He was Platinum I am currently Gold.

I also uploaded the replay here if anyone wanted to check it out. I'm open to critique/suggestions about what I can do better.

I noticed my APM in this game was damn low, I also noticed that my opponent's goes up to 400 at times, as he is literally just spamming attack a few of our battles.

Nuke wins the game for me, I had already expanded and there was no way he was going to live through my next push.

 

[DangerAardvark]

If you wanna learn how to counter cheese just play Agria Valley melee games and 90% of the time Protoss will cannon rush or proxy gateway. I learned that bunkering up is NOT the way to go if they're mixing lots and cannons, because cannons outrange bunkers. There really is no option but to scout it early and pull workers to help your first marine.

One toss tried that on me as I was in the process of proxying (sloppily) Reapers. So it ended up coming down to a base race. Except my base can fly. Problem was that I only had two reapers and his nexus was in full gathering mode and mine was in the air. So I'm harassing his mineral line and one of my reapers dies just as reaper speed finishes. Then my last reaper proceeds to kill his zealot army and nearly all of his probes, racking up 20 kills while I got my CC back up and running, netting me the eventual win.

Now I'm just wondering how to deal with the combination of proxy gateway and cannon push.

 

[Praxis1452]

If you wanna learn how to counter cheese just play Agria Valley melee games and 90% of the time Protoss will cannon rush or proxy gateway. I learned that bunkering up is NOT the way to go if they're mixing lots and cannons, because cannons outrange bunkers. There really is no option but to scout it early and pull workers to help your first marine.

One toss tried that on me as I was in the process of proxying (sloppily) Reapers. So it ended up coming down to a base race. Except my base can fly. Problem was that I only had two reapers and his nexus was in full gathering mode and mine was in the air. So I'm harassing his mineral line and one of my reapers dies just as reaper speed finishes. Then my last reaper proceeds to kill his zealot army and nearly all of his probes, racking up 20 kills while I got my CC back up and running, netting me the eventual win.

Now I'm just wondering how to deal with the combination of proxy gateway and cannon push.

If you're terran, proxy 2 gate is hard countered by proxy reaper rush. The key to proxy 2 gate is scouting more than anything else. If he's in your base then you send 1 scv to kill the probe and the rest to kill the pylon etc. If he's outside your wall and pushing, build a couple bunkers. You can always salvage them later.

 

[DangerAardvark]

Just found this guide to cannon rushing. Hopefully by knowing what a good rusher does, I'll be able to shit all over the mediocre ones which pervade battle.net. The most annoying thing is when they have good control over their probe and and kite you around whilst shitting out pylons/cannons.

From the guide:

Enemy Response Fail #1 - Pylon is Building - Send One Worker to Kill Probe
Some people try to solve the problem by sending only one worker to kill or follow your probe. One worker cannot stop anything. Probes are fast. If they send one worker to kill your probe, just queue it up to run a big circle in their base, and build the pylons and cannons as the other worker chases you.

Enemy Response Fail #2 - Pylon is Building - Send One Worker to Kill Pylon
If they send one worker to kill the pylon, laugh at it. It won’t do enough damage in time. They can’t stop you unless they commit more resources to the task.

While their probe is attacking the pylon, use your probe to attack their probe. If they don’t pay attention, you will kill it. If they do, they might try to fight you. In that case, either kill them (if you are ahead on damage) or run around in a circle.

Enemy Response Fail #3 - Pylon is Building - Send All Workers to Kill Pylon
Some people overreact. They send ALL workers. Workers collect minerals at a rate of about 0.8 minerals per second. So, if they have sent 10 workers, that’s 8 minerals per second. If you can waste their time for 3 seconds, you pretty much break even when you cancel the pylon.

If they send all the workers to kill the pylon, start building another pylon. Just watch the first pylon and cancel it before it dies. Usually, I will build this second pylon far away to make sure their probes have to travel and waste maximum time.

If they are killing your pylons, you may have to bail on the strategy eventually. But you can really damage their economy by forcing them to stop mining. More importantly, you damage their mind set and their rhythm. Also note that YOU won’t have to stop mining while this happens, so you can use this time to start building probes and catch up.

Enemy Response Fail #4 - Pylon is Building - Send All Workers to Kill Probe
If they send all of the probes after your probe, just laugh and run their probes around (or even out of) their base. As Borat said, "They will never get this!" There is no greater comedy than watching a comet tail form behind your probe as it trails angry workers around the enemy base.

Enemy Response Fail #5 - Pylon Completes - Send All Workers to Kill Pylon
This is my favorite mistake. When the pylon completes, immediately start building cannons. If they send a ton of probes to kill the pylon, good. The main goal is to get your cannons to complete.

Most people think that if they can take out the pylon, the cannons will power down. This is true. But, once the cannons are completed, it is really easy for me to build a bunch of pylons and get the cannons to power up again.

Anyone who has seen the Korean 4 warp gate knows that you can’t stop ALL the pylons from completing. One of them will finish. And when it does, the cannons will power up again. I have won many games like this.

The moral here is focus on what kills you... a pylon can’t shoot you, but a cannon can. It’s easy to build pylons: they are cheap and they complete quickly. Cannons are more expensive and take more time. Without the cannons there is no rush. So don’t let the cannons complete.

LOL, I think I've done every single one of those fails.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Just found this guide to cannon rushing. Hopefully by knowing what a good rusher does, I'll be able to shit all over the mediocre ones which pervade battle.net. The most annoying thing is when they have good control over their probe and and kite you around whilst shitting out pylons/cannons.

From the guide:


LOL, I think I've done every single one of those fails.

Me too. I even lifted off once and relocated to my natural. When I saw what he was doing I sent a marine every now and then to make sure he made a lot of cannons and then I moved out when he got in range of my base. I almost won that one. If you think about it, they're pretty heavily invested in cannons by the time they start shooting you most of the time. If you can just move out of your base before they do any serious damage you "should" be ahead on resources. In this case he teched up to dark templar before I could get into his base and I lost, but I still think the theory is sound.

 

[rcpratt]

Hm, just beat #3 diamond TvT. I hate this promotion system.

edit: Make that 4 straight top 10 diamonds. Blah.

 

[Glitchny]

For those interested, the MLG tourny finals are being streamed live at 2:30pm Pacific 5:30 Eastern here it's Huk vs KiwiKaki (Protoss vs Protoss).

Should be a good game as HuK is one of the best SC2 players and probably the best Protoss player in the world at the moment. Not sure who is casting this one but Husky, HD, Day9, and Psy have been casting all the games so far.

Some games have been crazy, actually saw a mothership come out in one of them.

 

[SlitheryDee]

For those interested, the MLG tourny finals are being streamed live at 2:30pm Pacific 5:30 Eastern here it's Huk vs KiwiKaki (Protoss vs Protoss).

Should be a good game as HuK is one of the best SC2 players and probably the best Protoss player in the world at the moment. Not sure who is casting this one but Husky, HD, Day9, and Psy have been casting all the games so far.

Some games have been crazy, actually saw a mothership come out in one of them.

That was by far the best game so far. Think it was Socke vs. Drewbie.

Kinda funny how the final three competitors were all protoss players after all the talk of terran being op.

 

[Glitchny]

That was by far the best game so far. Think it was Socke vs. Drewbie.

Kinda funny how the final three competitors were all protoss players after all the talk of terran being op.

Yea that was the game. As to the whining about Terrans, there is a reason blizz has been waiting. the game is still evolving and things are changing, also a lot of the crying was from zerg players.

 

[Glitchny]

So after watching these toss games I can understand why they are slowing down zealots, this shit is boring as hell to watch.

 

[Fenixgoon]

every time i've been cannon rushed i built a bunker, started getting marauders, teched to siege tanks, and won.

i guess the people trying to rush me didn't do a good job:hmm:

 

[Aikouka]

Hmm my friend and I seem to be having a bit of trouble. It looks like Blizzard was maybe testing us to move up in ranks as for a bit we were playing against silver and gold players, but the problem we ran into is that I was the only player that could fend off any sort of rush.

I play Terran at the moment and my friend is incessant on playing Zerg. Well, it seems my friend has absolutely no defense against Void Rays. We had a player rush Void Rays and I was the only one who could really defend against them :\. Any advice for a Zerg player that gets gang raped by VRs?

 

[beginner99]

That was by far the best game so far. Think it was Socke vs. Drewbie.

Kinda funny how the final three competitors were all protoss players after all the talk of terran being op.

the issue is that fighting MMM as toss with sentries, templar,... is possible but it is much harder than just selecting all your units and to an A-Move as the attacking terran can.

for the good/top players this is a non-issue because they are good at micro but for normal to casual gamers it is a problem because you need to be better than your opponnent.


The thing is for which group you do the balancing.

A counter to a certain strategy should never need more skill than the strategy it is countering.

i agree zealot rush is probably annyoing if you are a zerg. but same is a fast ling rush. How do you counter that as a toss? complete wall-og is kind of retarded as a toss.

 

[bhanson]

the issue is that fighting MMM as toss with sentries, templar,... is possible but it is much harder than just selecting all your units and to an A-Move as the attacking terran can.

for the good/top players this is a non-issue because they are good at micro but for normal to casual gamers it is a problem because you need to be better than your opponnent.


The thing is for which group you do the balancing.

A counter to a certain strategy should never need more skill than the strategy it is countering.

i agree zealot rush is probably annyoing if you are a zerg. but same is a fast ling rush. How do you counter that as a toss? complete wall-og is kind of retarded as a toss.

Game should always be balanced for the professional level. It's not possible to do it otherwise because only the pros are playing close enough to optimal to not result in huge shifts of balance due to meta game.

This is even more true for a game like StarCraft where the obvious focus is on eSports adoption and everything else comes second.

 

[Glitchny]

the issue is that fighting MMM as toss with sentries, templar,... is possible but it is much harder than just selecting all your units and to an A-Move as the attacking terran can.

for the good/top players this is a non-issue because they are good at micro but for normal to casual gamers it is a problem because you need to be better than your opponnent.


The thing is for which group you do the balancing.

A counter to a certain strategy should never need more skill than the strategy it is countering.

i agree zealot rush is probably annyoing if you are a zerg. but same is a fast ling rush. How do you counter that as a toss? complete wall-og is kind of retarded as a toss.

The whole A-moving thing is completely overblown, I spend half my time stim/marauder slow kiting when using MMM and it's certainly not A-moving all the time.

 

[Glitchny]

the issue is that fighting MMM as toss with sentries, templar,... is possible but it is much harder than just selecting all your units and to an A-Move as the attacking terran can.

for the good/top players this is a non-issue because they are good at micro but for normal to casual gamers it is a problem because you need to be better than your opponnent.


The thing is for which group you do the balancing.

A counter to a certain strategy should never need more skill than the strategy it is countering.

i agree zealot rush is probably annyoing if you are a zerg. but same is a fast ling rush. How do you counter that as a toss? complete wall-og is kind of retarded as a toss.

I've heard/seen it held off with extra queens with some decent micro using the queens to heal each other, but other than that I dunno.

 

[Pia]

Game should always be balanced for the professional level. It's not possible to do it otherwise because only the pros are playing close enough to optimal to not result in huge shifts of balance due to meta game.

True. I'd add that SC is, and should be, specifically balanced for 1v1. It's not possible to keep 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 and FFA in great balance at the same time and they really shouldn't try because it'll end up unbalancing 1v1.

But it's also in the best interests of the game to not be completely broken between low level players, or else interest in it will wane. In particular, defending against tactic X shouldn't be ridiculously harder than performing tactic X. It's often possible to tune the game in a way that doesn't really matter to good players, but equalizes things between weaker ones: buffing forms of rush defense that are still too weak after the buff for good players to use, making the micro necessary for that rush harder (but still highly manageable to a good player), etc.

I do fear a little bit that they are straying from 1v1 balancing, judging from what is slated for 1.1 patch. Weaker battlecruisers - have there really been too many battlecruisers in high-end tournaments? They even mention team games in conjunction with this decision.

 

[Glitchny]

I do fear a little bit that they are straying from 1v1 balancing, judging from what is slated for 1.1 patch. Weaker battlecruisers - have there really been too many battlecruisers in high-end tournaments? They even mention team games in conjunction with this decision.

I think this change may be for 2v2 or group games but it really shouldn't effect the 1v1/pro game as BC's are seldom used. It did strike me as odd though I've only ever seen BC's used twice.

 

[Pia]

I think this change may be for 2v2 or group games but it really shouldn't effect the 1v1/pro game as BC's are seldom used. It did strike me as odd though I've only ever seen BC's used twice.

Of course it affects 1v1, by guaranteeing BC will become even less relevant than they already are. Removing valid and interesting options makes for a worse game. They are sacrificing 1v1 quality for low-end play.

I do agree with Blizzard's opinion that there are few good units to fight BCs, but that is also true for carriers and to a degree also true about void rays. The way I see it, the reason capital ships are out of control (after they get out en masse, which is practically never in 1v1 due to cost) is that anti-air is so bad. I have no idea what a zerg is supposed to do to a maxed out toss air fleet with a carrier backbone e.g. at the end of a FFA now that there are no defilers, devourers or scourge and hydras cost two supply. Corruptors, hydras, infestors, nothing seems to work even against bad tosses. If the tosses bothered to use storm in addition to their a-move, it'd be even worse. Pure rays can be beat but their mobility with flux vanes is still absolutely insane compared to how fast they level key structures, how easy it is to charge them up on something, and how well charged rays do against even some of the best anti-ray units.

 

[Aikouka]

I always wondered if Flux Vanes was a little excessive with the void rays. I guess the idea of being able to escape danger better is okay because they sacrifice their damage/charge?

I use marines often against void rays simply because how easy it is to mass them. The only problem is if the person just starts micro'ing them around.

The one thing with Corruptors... they're anti-massive units, which means they're just anti Brood Lord, Battlecruiser and Carrier units (for the most part). That's why I've been wondering what to use as Zerg against them... I've been trying to check replays to find out what others do, but I can't find anything.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

All this stuff is way over my head right now. I just beat the AI on hard for the first time and I couldn't be happier.

 

[skulkingghost]

Hey Guys, I just wanted to drop in to this thread and say I am awful at Starcraft 2 and trying to get better, so I just put together the following program its going to be out mid September hopefully (I am submitting it for inclusion to the app store hopefully friday.)

If anyone has any suggestions as to things I can add / remove to make the app better for SC2 players let me know.

http://www.sc2gameboard.com

 

[DangerAardvark]

Wow. I'm something like 0-10 today. I'm in platinum and just getting rolled by everyone. It's ridiculous. It's like sometime this weekend my brain broke. And now I can't defend rushes. Every rush against me was successful. I can't do rushes. Every rush I tried failed miserably.

I even got 6 pooled so I just put my CC and Barracks at opposite ends of the map and went AFK.

I mean by sheer chance you'd think I would fight someone worse than me.