** Official Star Craft 2 Multiplayer Thread **

[magomago]

1v1 is stressful. It isn't fun at first because you don't have a crutch. its all about you vs him and it exposes problems in your game and your flaws very apparently. you'll get your ass handed to you, no doubt. however in my opinion it's the quickest way to get better and improve yourself. It can be fun later though once you start to identify your flaws and improve your game though!

Yeah but that is what ladder is about; you'll always be facing players of similar level. Once you've played enough such that your placement is accurate, I'd think it would still be fun.

 

[Glitchny]

TvT is my worst matchup.
i always lose to whoever controls ground with tanks and infantry.

TvZ. i've been holding my own with MMMs against zerg. they absolutely own lings, roaches are tanks but do little dmg, and if they go hydras, tanks rape em.
ppl go mutas but they can never mass a huge number of them in time. when they do, they have 3-5 and their base is already torn to pieces by my MM's.

can u expound on why mech is preferred vs zerg?

TvP, same thing as TvZ. they always try to tech to colossus and will have a couple by the time i'm at their base. stim the marauders and focus fire on them FTW.

maybe these strats won't work in diamond?

I prefer mech vs zerg mostly because it takes Banelings off the table for the most part. Thors can destroy Muta's and tanks clean up hydra's and lings to a certain extent. Blue Flame hellions are also amazing at roasting zerglings.

All the units complement each other very well.

Thors and tanks for heavy splash damage, and bonus vs armored.
Hellions protect Thors and sieged tanks from zerglings.
Thors and some marines protect hellions and tanks from mutas.
Tanks protect everything against hydras.
Also SCV's can repair the entire army.

It is just a very hard comp for zerg to deal with without some great Roach Burrow ambushes or broodlords/ultras.

Great match showing how powerful mech can be vs zerg

The strats will work in Diamond for awhile mostly because a lot of toss are still 4 gating because it is so incredibly easy to do. But as more go for 2gate + robo it becomes harder to use just MMM vs's their army. With immortals (marauder counter) and Colossi coming out faster it can get scary. They can get them faster and once they reach a critical mass they will roast infantry.

 

[bhanson]

 

[Glitchny]

haha yea zerg could probably use a little help.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

I prefer mech vs zerg mostly because it takes Banelings off the table for the most part. Thors can destroy Muta's and tanks clean up hydra's and lings to a certain extent. Blue Flame hellions are also amazing at roasting zerglings.

All the units complement each other very well.

Thors and tanks for heavy splash damage, and bonus vs armored.
Hellions protect Thors and sieged tanks from zerglings.
Thors and some marines protect hellions and tanks from mutas.
Tanks protect everything against hydras.
Also SCV's can repair the entire army.

It is just a very hard comp for zerg to deal with without some great Roach Burrow ambushes or broodlords/ultras.

Great match showing how powerful mech can be vs zerg

The strats will work in Diamond for awhile mostly because a lot of toss are still 4 gating because it is so incredibly easy to do. But as more go for 2gate + robo it becomes harder to use just MMM vs's their army. With immortals (marauder counter) and Colossi coming out faster it can get scary. They can get them faster and once they reach a critical mass they will roast infantry.

excellent, thanks.

 

[ImpulsE69]

So, when I started, I pretty much sucked at 1v1. I'm doing much better now and moved up(oddly, I'm in silver and beating diamond players but it's not advancing me (1 even said I was favored to win against a diamond player, and he didn't move down??).

Why am I doing better? because I finally gave in to what 1v1 really is. Rushing. Period. If I don't rush, I lose, because THEY do. I play with prot, and what I've found is you can either do units and forget about defense, or do defense and forget about units...if you do half and half, you can't get units/mins fast enough as lings or a MMM ball comes at you. Since I've started rushing, I've won 42 of 50 games. Out of those only 2 lasted past the rush (1 I won, 1 I lost).

Now, with that said...>BORRRINGGG. I much prefer 3v3/4v4 just for some variety..sure you get the blob rushes..but not nearly as often.

 

[eLiu]

So, when I started, I pretty much sucked at 1v1. I'm doing much better now and moved up(oddly, I'm in silver and beating diamond players but it's not advancing me (1 even said I was favored to win against a diamond player, and he didn't move down??).

Why am I doing better? because I finally gave in to what 1v1 really is. Rushing. Period. If I don't rush, I lose, because THEY do. I play with prot, and what I've found is you can either do units and forget about defense, or do defense and forget about units...if you do half and half, you can't get units/mins fast enough as lings or a MMM ball comes at you. Since I've started rushing, I've won 42 of 50 games. Out of those only 2 lasted past the rush (1 I won, 1 I lost).

Now, with that said...>BORRRINGGG. I much prefer 3v3/4v4 just for some variety..sure you get the blob rushes..but not nearly as often.

Just for clarity, what do you define as rushing? Like if you want to wait till everyone has 200 supply & have an epic showdown, then well... good luck finding that in SC2; it's rare. Though if you just get 8 pool'd constantly, that sucks

I find just as much rushing (to me, that's cutting workers to throw down early rax/gate/pool & pump rines/lots/lings OR haul ass to some kind of tech) in 3v3 or 4v4. Except it's even harder then b/c if my team isn't organized, then getting hit by 4 people's worth of rushing units at 1 of our bases is just game fuckin over.

I dunno, in pro games I almost never see cheesy rushes. I never do it unless my plan is just to lulz around in custom game land. So at least anecdotally, there is more than 1 way to play SC2...

 

[beginner99]

TvP, same thing as TvZ. they always try to tech to colossus and will have a couple by the time i'm at their base. stim the marauders and focus fire on them FTW.

Focus fire only works if colossus does not have extended thermal lance (=increased range).
And even if not, the focus firing basically allows the zealots to get close without being damaged and that's pretty good too.
But I'm tending to use immortals to defend the first push. they are obviously very good vs marauders and you can get more of them quicker than a colossus plus they are also useful vs tanks.
Force fields are powerful too but I'm not good enough to use them properly but diamond players can kill you with them. (separating your army on the ramp).

EDIT:

About zerg:
they can just 6-pool on 2 player maps vs toss and win most of the time if done right. Toss can't do much about it especially after the upcoming patch.
"Done right" means attack probes and move away as soon as they attack too. Then they either follow the lings (= no mining) or mine again -> attack again. the first zealot can't do much because lings are much quicker.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Just for clarity, what do you define as rushing? Like if you want to wait till everyone has 200 supply & have an epic showdown, then well... good luck finding that in SC2; it's rare. Though if you just get 8 pool'd constantly, that sucks

I find just as much rushing (to me, that's cutting workers to throw down early rax/gate/pool & pump rines/lots/lings OR haul ass to some kind of tech) in 3v3 or 4v4. Except it's even harder then b/c if my team isn't organized, then getting hit by 4 people's worth of rushing units at 1 of our bases is just game fuckin over.

I dunno, in pro games I almost never see cheesy rushes. I never do it unless my plan is just to lulz around in custom game land. So at least anecdotally, there is more than 1 way to play SC2...

Well first off, my idea of rush is -> the mass of t1: zealots/cannon rush/proxy/rines/lings(and mass may be too strong a word) and nothing else trying to hit as fast as possible. Obviously everyone is a little different, but I mean trying to end the game in 6 minutes or less. Very similar to yours except I do not consider teching rushing(although reapers would kind of stretch that). Sure you're hurrying to a new level, but you had to go thru t1 to get there. This does not mean harassment, there is definitely a difference in my eyes.

I do not think of any of it as cheese. Even cannon rushing..it's part of the game. As for not seeing it in the higher brackets...funny I keep hearing that, yet countless times I have seen it in my own games from diamond/plat members.

 

[beginner99]

I dunno, in pro games I almost never see cheesy rushes. I never do it unless my plan is just to lulz around in custom game land. So at least anecdotally, there is more than 1 way to play SC2...

There are some casts of cheese out there by top level players. 1 was a 6-pool vs toss. toss had 0 chance and is a pro too.
And a new cast is a 2-rax marine rush vs zerg. game is 3 min long...

So yes cheese also happens in pro games and it is also successful. The difference to us normal people is that we can get away doing it in every single game because my opponents in ladder don't know me and that I always do a early cheese rush.

 

[onza]

Is the patch going yet?

 

[bhanson]

There are some casts of cheese out there by top level players. 1 was a 6-pool vs toss. toss had 0 chance and is a pro too.
And a new cast is a 2-rax marine rush vs zerg. game is 3 min long...

So yes cheese also happens in pro games and it is also successful. The difference to us normal people is that we can get away doing it in every single game because my opponents in ladder don't know me and that I always do a early cheese rush.

The players on the professional level have to deal with meta-game which is just about as important as raw mechanics. What maps they will thumb-down will depend on what they don't want to play on AND what they think their opponent will eliminate.

They will often use "greedy" strategies early because early advantages compound into huge leads later in the game. It's completely trivial to never lose to cheese if you play a very safe build. You could 10 pool/rax/gate and scout for proxies at 8 supply and never lose to it. Unfortunately, while you won't be losing to cheese you will lose to literally everything else.

Cheese plays the role on a professional level to keep players honest. The most obvious case of this is in a ZvZ when two Zerg players spawn in close air distances on a 2 player map. The game turns into a game of chicken where you just wait for the other player to build their pool before you build yours. Instead of 10-14 pool you will often see 16+ pool. If you build your pool too much later than the other player you instantly lose, so instead you want it 1-2 supply after the other player because defenders advantage will keep you from dying but you will have an economic advantage.

This "greediness" essentially goes back and forth until one player cheeses and takes their free win. There's no reason to cheese on the ladder for a win unless you're practicing that particular build because the value of meta-game is diminished.

That 6-pool game is interesting because only a Professional gamer would be able to win with that. Yes, technically any platinum+ level player would have won that particular game, but that situation would never have happened if the player sucked. If you're much better than your opponent then you play a "safer" build because if you make it to mid game then you win. Mid/late game is much more complicated and requires a lot more practice to play to the same levels as early game.

At a professional level where the player skill is very close going into mid/late game those early advantages are very important later which is why the players use the greedy builds.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

6 pool does not work on anyone remotely good because a good player ALWAYS scouts.

 

[bhanson]

6 pool does not work on anyone remotely good because a good player ALWAYS scouts.

This is not true.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

This is not true.

this is definitely not true.

 

[imaheadcase]

mTwDIMAGA and bluBla, those 2 are epic zerg players. I watched one of those matches they had recently, and i "think" it was bluBla, but he attacked with just queens! He just kept using transfusion and make a huge push so much other players had to quit because no more resources. lol

Qweens are pretty awesome. I just can't micro anywhere close to that fast. lol

 

[Glitchny]

Patch notes are up in the main SC2 thread.

 

[rcpratt]

Small sample size much?

 

[rcpratt]

For the diamond players here... how many games/wins did it take you to move up from platinum to diamond?

It took me over 25 games after I had reached rank 1 Plat. Over 35 after I had started playing diamond players every game. But my case seemed extreme...I was top 10 Plat in the US points-wise before I was promoted. Winning% was very high, not sure why it took so long.

 

[bhanson]

Small sample size much?

Consensus on TL.net is that this metric is the most accurate available.

Yes, a few thousand players is a drop in the water compared to the millions of SC2 players, but these players are the best in the world.

Since the game should be primarily balanced around the professional level, a race distribution graph from the top 2000 players most of which play for 10+ hours a day seems like a pretty good metric.

If you want a larger sample size, this data is relatively consistent with sc2ranks.com's worldwide rankings across 1 million players.

In the top 100, 250, and 500 of diamond Zerg barely has 19% with Terran being 45%+.

Until you get to the very high levels I doubt race matters as much since everyone makes so many mistakes, but at the higher end of things it's very clear Zerg is at a disadvantage.

 

[beginner99]

6 pool does not work on anyone remotely good because a good player ALWAYS scouts.

Only if you scout very early as toss normally before building your first pylon. If you scout at 9 the pool is already finished once you are in the zergs base. It's too late then if you didn't prepare for it before scouting. that's the point.
In depends on the map of course. On desert oasis 6-pool is rather useless.

Did you ever run in a 6-pool rusher? or are you terran? = just wall of as always no special precaution needed at all.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Only if you scout very early as toss normally before building your first pylon. If you scout at 9 the pool is already finished once you are in the zergs base. It's too late then if you didn't prepare for it before scouting. that's the point.
In depends on the map of course. On desert oasis 6-pool is rather useless.

Did you ever run in a 6-pool rusher? or are you terran? = just wall of as always no special precaution needed at all.

i play random.
you have to run around and/or fight with workers until your first unit is out. then you use workers to block/fight the lings from getting to your marine. sometimes he dies, but usually they've lost a good amount of lings as well. your 2nd marine should be out to finish the remaining lings.

by then, you'll have economic advantage and your counter attack will easily wipe him out.

 

[Glitchny]

Only if you scout very early as toss normally before building your first pylon. If you scout at 9 the pool is already finished once you are in the zergs base. It's too late then if you didn't prepare for it before scouting. that's the point.
In depends on the map of course. On desert oasis 6-pool is rather useless.

Did you ever run in a 6-pool rusher? or are you terran? = just wall of as always no special precaution needed at all.

Most pro toss I've see wall off with Gateway/Core + zealot in the gap, which is possible to have crono boosted out by the time the zerglings arrive (so I'm told). I've never done this as I don't play protoss but it seems to be the easiest way to prevent a 6 pool.

so what you're saying is, protoss need to be nerfed as they have the highest representation in all brackets except Bronze.

 

[Praxis1452]

Only if you scout very early as toss normally before building your first pylon. If you scout at 9 the pool is already finished once you are in the zergs base. It's too late then if you didn't prepare for it before scouting. that's the point.
In depends on the map of course. On desert oasis 6-pool is rather useless.

Did you ever run in a 6-pool rusher? or are you terran? = just wall of as always no special precaution needed at all.

Scouting after 9 is hardly that late on any 2 player map. Their pool may be done, but even playing standard, 12 gate, 14 core, you will be able to get the zealot out in time. If you really feel that it is such a big risk, then send an early probe. 6 pools are incredibly obvious, if no 6 pool, play standard.

Btw, top zerg players in korea are actually complaining more about PvZ than TvZ.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Let me go against the grain here and say I don't care what top players are doing, they represent what...2% of the playerbase? I don't imagine I'll be spending every waking second playing SC2 to worry about it and/or try to be like them. Good for them, now quit catering to them, and worry more about us crappy players.:whiste: