the world's all about ach

Commander

pat1487 wrote:: You cant just keep trading armies vs zerg, it actually helps them since they free up supply to tech switch...collusus just trades well with zerg ground since they kill a lot from a distance, where as zealot archon wont trade well since they have to get close and dont kill as much at 1 time

Definitely.
With my colossus the zerg was losing double or triple what i was.
All my colossus do get pulled by vipers some times, which is their main weakness i think. But i think that just reinforces the point that HT/archons are important in your army in the late game, and that i need to learn to use feedback.

pat1487 wrote:: Denying an expansion with cannons is very inefficient and wont work most of the time, 1 pylon and a canon costs 300 minerals, your basicaly spending as much as it costs for an expansion to deny an expansion

I disagree. It hurts a zegs econ, production, and tech. Whereas a simple loss of minerals to toss only delays tech and production, and even then, minerals cease to be the main limiting factor for toss much sooner than for zerg, so the loss of minerals isn't very harmful.
Also, i feel like the main value isn't even the economic damage, but just because it throws off peoples build order, and disrupts their play. MIND GAMES PAT~!!! MIND GAMES.
Also, idk if you watch PsY's casts, but he's a zerg player, and in his words "idk why so many toss don't always punish expanding zerg's with that first probe scout. If they just let me expand, i feel like im instantly ahead"
Also, a lot of zergs (and i would think basically any macro zerg) like to take a third in response to a fast expand from toss, and if you block their natural they're either forced onto a 2 base economy for longer than they want (which puts you in the lead, regardless of any minerals you lost), but even better, if they take a third anyway, then they can put themselves in a really bad position which sets you up for zealot counter attacks in the mid and late game.

pat1487 wrote:: If you split up your army to defend drops the terran can just attack an expansion with the rest of his stuff and you wont have enough to stop it since your army is in 3 or 4 places, all they have to do is jump in with a force that overwhelms the units you left to protect that expo, kill off the expo, and run away before the rest of your army gets there, which will then leave open your main since you probably pulled the units protecting that to help with his army at your expo which means he can drop in there now

I think you misunderstood what i meant by "split up" if you put your army into 2 control groups in a central location you can respond with any part of your army really quickly. if its just a single medivac, then you send 1 control group but shift click out half-ish of it and send the rest back, leaving you with 3/4 of your force which should still be plenty to defend anything. this means you should always have a big part of your force ready for a big attack, but also ready for a lot of small drops since you can split your army into 4 pieces really easily, and of course, rejoin them easily.

pat1487 wrote:: a full toss army vs a full terran army, toss should win by a little

its like.. not even close. Toss OP. a lot of times when i finally move out after they've been pressuring i don't bother reinforcing, i just rally units into my main (Or send them to kill silly expos if they're inconvenient for my main force).
I did this with a terran that asks to play with me a lot for him to practice. We let each other max out repeatedly, and zelot, stalker, colossus HT raped any composition of marine, marauder, ghosts, viking, medivac, widow mine, etc. The only thing that worked was when he was silly and made mass battle cruiser, but then i made a few tempests before he did anything, and he lost them all anyway.
He had maxed upgrades and i had 3/3, but without shields

pat1487 wrote:: only way to stop that is to make sure it cant start really

yeah… idk if you knew this, but i just found out, that if you shift click an scv with your own worker 50 times while its building, then your worker will keep trying to attack it even though whenever it moves it would normally make the AI stop. most helpful with proxies since they wont have a backup scv anywhere after you get the first hit off.

pat1487 wrote:: You shouldve attacked with the units you made that you said were wasted, couldve done some damage with them, at the very least it wouldve forced him to make more army rather then making scvs which wouldve slowed his economy long enough for you to even out with him

oh god. you're right. i had completely forgotten how good a rule that is.

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Also, im so bad at 2 base all ins.
I decided i should try them vs zerg, and both my games i ended up floating over 1000min / 500gas. I lost the first time, then i went against a terran player that was off racing as zerg and managed to make it work.
The lesson i learned was 2 basing is dumb, and only dumb people do it.

10 base = only non-cheese play

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Also, that cheese we talked about has worked 100% of games so far.
i've done it vs: 3gate robo, 4gate, 1 base dt rush, dt expand, and robo expand.
(mostly also cheesy builds) it made me realize how few protosses actually play legit in pvp. i think i overestimated how many there are that will actually macro with you because im used to holding off cheesy rushes and then playing legit from there. And then remember the majority of the game that was normal.
I dont understand how i've never had to play against this tho. cuz the only variatiosn of stargate proxy i've seen have sucked, and been easy to beat.
I know i've seen pro games where people do more similar things, so you'd think every protoss would be using it.

Moderator

Achilles.42 wrote:: I disagree. It hurts a zegs econ, production, and tech. Whereas a simple loss of minerals to toss only delays tech and production, and even then, minerals cease to be the main limiting factor for toss much sooner than for zerg, so the loss of minerals isn't very harmful.
Also, i feel like the main value isn't even the economic damage, but just because it throws off peoples build order, and disrupts their play. MIND GAMES PAT~!!! MIND GAMES.
Also, idk if you watch PsY's casts, but he's a zerg player, and in his words "idk why so many toss don't always punish expanding zerg's with that first probe scout. If they just let me expand, i feel like im instantly ahead"
Also, a lot of zergs (and i would think basically any macro zerg) like to take a third in response to a fast expand from toss, and if you block their natural they're either forced onto a 2 base economy for longer than they want (which puts you in the lead, regardless of any minerals you lost), but even better, if they take a third anyway, then they can put themselves in a really bad position which sets you up for zealot counter attacks in the mid and late game.

I didnt mean you shouldnt deny expansions, i just meant that using cannons is an inefficient way to deny expansions, there are better ways to do it
Plus if you spend the money on cannons early in the game the zerg will be able to overwhelm your army if he just attacks after seeing what you did, even if he doesnt kill you with his attack he will do damage and will have expanded in another place where there are no cannons so it really isnt worth it

Achilles.42 wrote:: I think you misunderstood what i meant by "split up" if you put your army into 2 control groups in a central location you can respond with any part of your army really quickly. if its just a single medivac, then you send 1 control group but shift click out half-ish of it and send the rest back, leaving you with 3/4 of your force which should still be plenty to defend anything. this means you should always have a big part of your force ready for a big attack, but also ready for a lot of small drops since you can split your army into 4 pieces really easily, and of course, rejoin them easily.

If you do it that way youll never stop drops
The terran will drop in, deal some damage, and boost away when he sees you coming if you react the way you said

Achilles.42 wrote:: its like.. not even close. Toss OP. a lot of times when i finally move out after they've been pressuring i don't bother reinforcing, i just rally units into my main (Or send them to kill silly expos if they're inconvenient for my main force).
I did this with a terran that asks to play with me a lot for him to practice. We let each other max out repeatedly, and zelot, stalker, colossus HT raped any composition of marine, marauder, ghosts, viking, medivac, widow mine, etc. The only thing that worked was when he was silly and made mass battle cruiser, but then i made a few tempests before he did anything, and he lost them all anyway.
He had maxed upgrades and i had 3/3, but without shields

Tanks, hellbats, marauders, vikings, and a few medivacs and ghost should crush that army composition, just EMP the HT
Even without that ideal composition you could break even with mmmtv, spread your mm out so colossus and storms arent as effective and keep your viking in range of tanks so stalker get killed when they try to kill viking (focus the stalkers with the tanks), you could even stim the marauders forward to focus stalkers if you wanted
Once the stalkers are dead the toss is screwed cause they will lose all colossus and wont be able to outproduce the terrans mmt (assuming they have the same economy)

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Achilles.42 wrote:: Also, im so bad at 2 base all ins.
I decided i should try them vs zerg, and both my games i ended up floating over 1000min / 500gas. I lost the first time, then i went against a terran player that was off racing as zerg and managed to make it work.
The lesson i learned was 2 basing is dumb, and only dumb people do it.

10 base = only non-cheese play

You need more production then normal for all ins since you arent making probes, expanding, or teching

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Achilles.42 wrote:: Also, that cheese we talked about has worked 100% of games so far.
i've done it vs: 3gate robo, 4gate, 1 base dt rush, dt expand, and robo expand.
(mostly also cheesy builds) it made me realize how few protosses actually play legit in pvp. i think i overestimated how many there are that will actually macro with you because im used to holding off cheesy rushes and then playing legit from there. And then remember the majority of the game that was normal.
I dont understand how i've never had to play against this tho. cuz the only variatiosn of stargate proxy i've seen have sucked, and been easy to beat.
I know i've seen pro games where people do more similar things, so you'd think every protoss would be using it.

When i said that cheese was easy to hold off in my other post i didnt think about the zealots that would be made with the voids, the zealots are the reason it works since the stalkers have to deal with them while the voids are free to do whatever they want
I think it would work against terran and zerg too, against zerg you kill overlords and use zealots to kill queen, if they have roaches you can use alignment to kill them and if they made spines/spore you can send in whatever they have less defense for, so if they have a lot of spines send in the voids, if they have a lot of spores send in the zealots
And for terran you have to kill tech labs before they get stim, which could be hard, you would have to go in before warpgate is finished since warpgate takes longer to upgrade then stim does and if they start stim right when tech lab is done they will have it before you get there, so chrono the void, get it there asap and alignment to take out tech lab (hope that theres only 1) and send in zealots a bit after, kill supply depots after tech lab and dealing with the army
Without stim marines suck vs void

Commander

pat1487 wrote:: You need more production then normal for all ins since you arent making probes, expanding, or teching

i kept telling myself i could stop making probes. and when i looked i had over 24/3/3 on each base after my all in failed.

pat1487 wrote:: Tanks, hellbats, marauders, vikings, and a few medivacs and ghost should crush that army composition, just EMP the HT

Ghosts: they certainly help, but its really hard to actually EMP HT when their sitting at the center of an army with 3+ collosus and obs. I played a couple games today where terrans were trying to snipe and EMP my ht, they'd get a couple at a time, but never enough to disable storms completely. And EMPs can only take out half a units HP, so even with a few HT left with energy, the toss will still have a massive AoE advantage. Also, this is one of the reasons i've been maxing armor before shields. It makes EMP's far less damaging.

Tanks: i havn't seen tanks effectively used sever dozen games. I assume because it takes away from the terrans mobility, and you cant have enough tanks covering every base, so hypothetically you could win vs the toss if they walked into a giant sige line, but most likely the toss is just gonna hit whichever base isn't protected, tanks response time will be to long to save them, and if you try and base race they'll just recall and kill everything.

The only thing i lose to is if they kill a lot of my probes with drops (putting 1 widow mine in each medivac of 7 marines is really effective, and hitting both your natural and your main) Cus even if you respond perfectly you're gonna have to pull probes while you get teh slow moving obs in position.
And after that econ advantage i tend to die to effective pushing. Cus ill always have collosus, but since i've been losing untis this whole time the collosus aren't nearly effective enough cuz the terran can run forward and snipe them.

I also lose whenever i play our friend Cat.
But that just feels like losing to a player thats better than me, and not because i had the wrong stratagy.
The main thing he does is just he uses very effective attack timings to keep my army supply down so i cant get a good death ball, and he mixes in a lot more marauders, which i think is really important cuz marines die to easilly to collosus and storms, but marauders have the annoying habit of staying alive.
I looked at the replay and he had a 3/2 ratio of techlabs/reactors, whereas most people go crazy with the marine production.

However, those heavy forces of marauders are really effective if you use them to stop the toss from maxing out. But once the toss gets maxed out i still say its GG for the terran (9 times out of 10). (everything that we say i think of as having the words '9 times out of 10' coming after, incase you thought i speaking with more certitude).

pat1487 wrote:: If you do it that way youll never stop drops
The terran will drop in, deal some damage, and boost away when he sees you coming if you react the way you said

How else would you defend drops? so far as i know thats the only way you deal with them.
If the terran boosts away before being killed off then he's not going to do any damamge (if im reacting quickly enough. and if he does damage cuz i dont react than im just bad, and next time have to react faster). or he's going to do damage but also take damamge. 8-16 marines + 1-2 medivacs aren't losses you can take repeatedly.
Also, he's probably rarely going to actually boost out in time, because most likely he's attacking multiple points at once. and its really hard to micro and save medivacs (or medivacs and armies) in 2 different places at the same time. And if he does only attack in one place, then it'll be easy to respond to.

Toss too imba for terran

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EDIT: so, overall my point with protoss vs terran is this:
with superiror micro the terran can beat the toss if both players are maxed, however, in most cases the toss's micro will be good enough to counter the terran's micro.

Furthermore, if you look at an army graph of TvP, in most of my games even when we're both at 200 supply, my army graph is a significant amount higher than his. i.e. my army was more expensive, and all that money is rewarded by my army being more powerful. If the terran spent his supply on a composition of battle cruisers and thors (or something) then it should be equally expensive, and equally powerful. However, unlike toss, thats not the easiest tech path to take, so everyone has a huge amount of suply in MMM, which is too cheep and weak vs a the more expensive and powerful toss army.

A LOT BEATS A LITTLE EVERY TIME!!@!@!

Moderator

Achilles.42 wrote:: Ghosts: they certainly help, but its really hard to actually EMP HT when their sitting at the center of an army with 3+ collosus and obs. I played a couple games today where terrans were trying to snipe and EMP my ht, they'd get a couple at a time, but never enough to disable storms completely. And EMPs can only take out half a units HP, so even with a few HT left with energy, the toss will still have a massive AoE advantage. Also, this is one of the reasons i've been maxing armor before shields. It makes EMP's far less damaging.

EMPing the HT isnt that hard most people group them up to make them easier to control

Achilles.42 wrote:: Tanks: i havn't seen tanks effectively used sever dozen games. I assume because it takes away from the terrans mobility, and you cant have enough tanks covering every base, so hypothetically you could win vs the toss if they walked into a giant sige line, but most likely the toss is just gonna hit whichever base isn't protected, tanks response time will be to long to save them, and if you try and base race they'll just recall and kill everything.

Terran would go for base race in that situation, and if you recall and the terran has his tanks set up next to where you recall to all your stuff will die before the recall is over
Even if you recall to another base your still going to have to run into tank line after you lost 1 of your bases and the battle will happen like i was saying

Achilles.42 wrote:: I also lose whenever i play our friend Cat.
But that just feels like losing to a player thats better than me, and not because i had the wrong stratagy.
The main thing he does is just he uses very effective attack timings to keep my army supply down so i cant get a good death ball, and he mixes in a lot more marauders, which i think is really important cuz marines die to easilly to collosus and storms, but marauders have the annoying habit of staying alive.
I looked at the replay and he had a 3/2 ratio of techlabs/reactors, whereas most people go crazy with the marine production

However, those heavy forces of marauders are really effective if you use them to stop the toss from maxing out. But once the toss gets maxed out i still say its GG for the terran (9 times out of 10). (everything that we say i think of as having the words '9 times out of 10' coming after, incase you thought i speaking with more certitude).

Thats why in the ideal composition with ghosts i said i didnt say marines should be in it because marauders are better in that situation
Stopping the toss from maxing out is better but if they do max out its not 90%, its closer to 60%, 40% with that ideal composition and proper micro from the terran

Achilles.42 wrote:: If the terran boosts away before being killed off then he's not going to do any damamge (if im reacting quickly enough. and if he does damage cuz i dont react than im just bad, and next time have to react faster). or he's going to do damage but also take damamge. 8-16 marines + 1-2 medivacs aren't losses you can take repeatedly.
Also, he's probably rarely going to actually boost out in time, because most likely he's attacking multiple points at once. and its really hard to micro and save medivacs (or medivacs and armies) in 2 different places at the same time. And if he does only attack in one place, then it'll be easy to respond to.

You cant respond quickly enough because your units dont walk fast enough to make it in time before he unloads and kills some stuff, even if you see it coming youll barely get there unless your on 2 base and you army is near the ramp to your main, or if you recall some stuff
If your on 3 base and have your army near the 3rd because the terran is positioned near your 3rd and he drops on your main its impossible for the units you split off from your army to make it to your main before the terran does some damage, even if you react ahead of the drop the units are too slow to get there before you lose something

Achilles.42 wrote:: How else would you defend drops? so far as i know thats the only way you deal with them.

I put 1 or 2 cannons behind the minerals and will warp in stalkers to the pylons powering the cannons to defend drops, since drops are usually marines and stalkers are good enough vs small numbers of rines especially with cannon support
If theres 2 or more drops at the same time ill run some stuff to the closest bases and warp in to the furthest
If warp in is on cd and the base is too far ill chrono as many warpgates as i can so that i can warp in sooner
If i feel really threatened by drops ill leave a colossus in minerals with the cannons and maybe a stalker or 2 (ill only do this if i have 1 base that i absolutely need to protect, or if i have 3 or more with a really good economy going)

Achilles.42 wrote:: EDIT: so, overall my point with protoss vs terran is this:
with superiror micro the terran can beat the toss if both players are maxed, however, in most cases the toss's micro will be good enough to counter the terran's micro.

Superior terran micro will beat toss if they also have the right composition, and will break even with toss with the wrong composition
Decent terran micro will be like you said against decent toss micro

Achilles.42 wrote:: Furthermore, if you look at an army graph of TvP, in most of my games even when we're both at 200 supply, my army graph is a significant amount higher than his. i.e. my army was more expensive, and all that money is rewarded by my army being more powerful. If the terran spent his supply on a composition of battle cruisers and thors (or something) then it should be equally expensive, and equally powerful. However, unlike toss, thats not the easiest tech path to take, so everyone has a huge amount of suply in MMM, which is too cheep and weak vs a the more expensive and powerful toss army.

A LOT BEATS A LITTLE EVERY TIME!!@!@!

The army graph doesnt really mean anything though since it measures the cost of the unit rather then the usefulness of the unit
Thors and BC are rarely more useful than mmmt
Like how toss can have a huge army graph by making pure carrier but a lower graph of pure marine/viking/stalkers/voids/hydras/corrupters will win
The only time it really matters is if your comparing 2 players that are the same race and did the same build

Commander

Looks like we'll have to play some pvt, or ill host some of my replays of people using ghosts and you'll see how futile it is Razz

I forgot about the cannons tho. i totally agree that it only works if you have those with your minerals, whether you're warping in to defend, or splitting your army. theoretically the terran can just shift click a lot of your probes and do a lot of damage, but that'll almost never happen (just like how theoretically ghosts nullify ht ^_^)

pat1487 wrote:: The army graph doesnt really mean anything though since it measures the cost of the unit rather then the usefulness of the unit

I was just trying to use it to show how terran waists a lot of its army supply on weaker low cost units. which i was trying to say is part of why they always lose.

Usefulness is of course not measured, but unless there are some serious hard counters (carrier vs viking, marine) or some serious imbalance, then the more expensive army will generally win. (and if someone lets themselves get hard countered with 200 supply then they're probably just bad. it'd probably be some idiot in gold league or something)

pat1487 wrote:: Terran would go for base race in that situation, and if you recall and the terran has his tanks set up next to where you recall to all your stuff will die before the recall is over
Even if you recall to another base your still going to have to run into tank line after you lost 1 of your bases and the battle will happen like i was saying

I dont see how a base race would be winnable with tanks vs colosus HT. either the army is in front of the tanks, and the colosus and HT can burn it up out of range of the tanks, or the infantry is clustered around/behind the tanks and the colosus can pickoff the tanks (colossus are really strong vs tanks, and that point in the game you should have 6+ colosi, which should require a huge number of tanks to be beaten).

If you wait too long and you're forced to recall to your main or natural, where a tank line only has one way to engage it, then maybe you'd be fuck'd, but once you sense a base race i think the toss should just do a bunch of damage, then recall right as the terran gets to the first base

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On a side note, my most recent pvp game i did that voidray zelot cheese again, and the guy messaged me after he left without gg'ing (noone wants to gg after losing to cheese). Anyway, i see the message box pop up and im like "well i guess he's justified in trolling me a little" then i click on it and its:
Him: "gg : )"
Me: "eh. you deserved a better game. i hate when people cheese like i did"
Him: "nah, its a fair game. i knew i was screwed when the first void came in"
Me" "<3"

Im always surprised by the really nice people on the interent
He had 4k games too, you'd think it'd only be the people with ~100 games (ya know, before they have their hearts broken by 7 pools and cannons) that'd have such auras of niceness.

Moderator

Achilles.42 wrote:: Looks like we'll have to play some pvt, or ill host some of my replays of people using ghosts and you'll see how futile it is

Neither of us main as T so it wouldnt really work, and if you have a replay of a plat or diamond T that mains as T that used ghosts/tank/marauder/viking/hellbat/medivac and you won completely 1 sidedly with the colossus/ht deathball then id like to see it

Achilles.42 wrote:: I forgot about the cannons tho. i totally agree that it only works if you have those with your minerals, whether you're warping in to defend, or splitting your army. theoretically the terran can just shift click a lot of your probes and do a lot of damage, but that'll almost never happen (just like how theoretically ghosts nullify ht ^_^)

People almost always target probes during drops, even when theres cannons, thats why running some guys over doesnt work unless your close enough

Achilles.42 wrote:: I was just trying to use it to show how terran waists a lot of its army supply on weaker low cost units. which i was trying to say is part of why they always lose.

Usefulness is of course not measured, but unless there are some serious hard counters (carrier vs viking, marine) or some serious imbalance, then the more expensive army will generally win. (and if someone lets themselves get hard countered with 200 supply then they're probably just bad. it'd probably be some idiot in gold league or something)

Theres a reason that T doesnt make bc/thor though, its the same reason that P doesnt make carrier
BC and thor are really cost inefficient vs anything toss has (as carrier is inefficient against what terran has, stalkers are too, but not as bad)
Even against soft counters BC/thor loses, blink stalkers tear BC apart, and zealots can beat thors with charge
Its not that they waste supply in low tier units its that those low tier units are more effective/useful then bc/thor since zealot/stalker can counter them which the toss is going to make without even trying to counter

Achilles.42 wrote:: I dont see how a base race would be winnable with tanks vs colosus HT. either the army is in front of the tanks, and the colosus and HT can burn it up out of range of the tanks, or the infantry is clustered around/behind the tanks and the colosus can pickoff the tanks (colossus are really strong vs tanks, and that point in the game you should have 6+ colosi, which should require a huge number of tanks to be beaten).

If you wait too long and you're forced to recall to your main or natural, where a tank line only has one way to engage it, then maybe you'd be fuck'd, but once you sense a base race i think the toss should just do a bunch of damage, then recall right as the terran gets to the first base

The tanks arent for killing colossus, they are for killing the stalkers while the vikings kill collusus, viking range is far enough that if you put your army half way between your tanks and the max range of the tanks stalkers will be in range of tanks while viking attacks colossus
Also HT range of storm will put them in range of tanks if the army is at that half way point when they storm which means T can pick some of those off with tanks too, the ghosts would be behind the rest of the army but slightly ahead of tanks since EMP range is slightly longer than storm, the hellbats and marauders with medivac support would be dealing with archons and zealots and immortals if toss threw some of those in
The tanks should kill stalker before all the vikings die unless the toss went heavy on stalkers, and once the stalkers are dead the T should win that fight or break even depending on how many vikings survived

And since the T is spending less money on his army he should be the one to max and attack first so your plan of dealing damage and going back as the T gets there wont work since the T should be the one to start it
When i said the terran would go for a bace race i meant that if you attacked him after he attacked you, if you attack first the battle would happen like i said above, but at 1 of his bases, but again, the T should be the one to attack first

Commander

Tanks definitelly can be really effective like you were saying. i didn't really believe you at first.
i was playing the AI just cuz im still trying to get used to screen hot keys, and i looked away from my main army at exactly the wrong second cus i wanted to micro some stupid zelot harass, and the AI must have sieged up perfectly outside of my vision, cus when i checked the main army that i didn't think was a threat my whole army was almost dead, and the AI had lost almost nothing. i was on 3/3/0 upgrades and it had 1/2. was so embarrassing.

So i finally got that plat/diamond replay you wanted (almost)
The guy is gold, but i think its only cus he's only played 30 games this season, but he was diamond the last 2 seasons (2013).
He mains as Terran and has the 1000 solo win achievement
He never made ghosts though, which obviously means it doesn't meet your criteria Sad

But he went for drops at first than tried to pressure my bases with drops and a main army with tanks.
He had a good number of tanks but couldn't make them work.
Once we got out of the mid game it was extremely one sided.
the world's all about ach - Page 5 Screen10

the world's all about ach - Page 5 Screen10

pat1487 wrote:: Its not that they waste supply in low tier units its that those low tier units are more effective/useful then bc/thor since zealot/stalker can counter them which the toss is going to make without even trying to counter

Yeah, you're probably right. That was a bad point that i was making.

pat1487 wrote:: People almost always target probes during drops, even when theres cannons, thats why running some guys over doesnt work unless your close enough

Yeah, but you have to have insane micro and mouse speed to be able to shift click more than a few probes, so you only end up losing 8 or so. And shift click killing probes takes much longer than if the marines were allowed to fire at all the probes at once like they would without static defense messing up their AI.
And losing 8 probes if you have decent saturation (around 16/3/3 on each base) basically does no damage unless you lose your gas probes, and then you only lose more apm cuz you have to transfer some probes back to gas. But unless you're playing at a master/grandmaster level losing 8 probes as toss shouldn't impact your economy much at all because gas is the limiting factor of your econ. (i say would only matter at a master/grandmaster level because its only there where people have their minerals/gas balanced so perfectly in their macro, so, even a small loss of minerals should be significant in that case)

In short: i dont think drops are scary if you have static defense and respond with either a warp in or part of your army.
Drops are fucking terrifying if you miss them on the minimap for even a few extra seconds tho, cus that gives them time to kill your static D and destroy an entire base of probes, which does wreck your econ.
(This is a complete tangent, but i've noticed that sniping tech with a drop is really situational whether it cripples you or not, some times losing a robo bay or upgrades is the worst thing in the world, but other times is easy to afford the time to rebuild the loss)

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EDIT: Speaking of zerg (jk, havn't mentioned them in awhile) i picked up something watching Psy's videos that i really like. Once you scout that a third hatch is on the way, sending out 6-8 zelots with +1 is really effective at forcing a cancel, and really cost effective too. The reason being, zerg generally hasn't made anything but lings yet, and +1 zelots tear through lings like crazy. one time i forced the cancel and lost all my zelots, and the other time i forced the cancel and survived with 2 zelots. Depending on where the third is it can also be safe to send the mothership core along too, since there's no AA sept for queens.

Commander

Way to much to read, I'm going going to interject with a good ol' fashion hi.

So, HI!

Commander

maarrrkkkk!!!!

Why do you hate us and never play!?!?!?!?
Should i start flooding you with fb messages again whenever we're playing? i think so.
I stopped sending them cuz there we're too many in a row where you couldn't manage to show up ;(

Commander

I blame you

Moderator

Achilles.42 wrote:: Tanks definitelly can be really effective like you were saying. i didn't really believe you at first.

I think its weird that you didnt beleive me about tanks being good vs toss but do beleive that banelings are good against terran

Achilles.42 wrote:: He never made ghosts though, which obviously means it doesn't meet your criteria

I knew you wouldnt have a replay like that when i set the criteria because if a game had happened like that you would know what im talking about and wouldnt be arguing about it

Achilles.42 wrote:: In short: i dont think drops are scary if you have static defense and respond with either a warp in or part of your army.
Drops are fucking terrifying if you miss them on the minimap for even a few extra seconds tho, cus that gives them time to kill your static D and destroy an entire base of probes, which does wreck your econ.

It depends on the timing of the drop, my original point was that you can get overwhelmed when trying to defend drops
Which is still true if you split off important units or use warp in at a time when you need it at your front
Its not that the drop does damage its that it leaves an opening at the front where theres a window to make something happen for the T

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Achilles.42 wrote:: EDIT: Speaking of zerg (jk, havn't mentioned them in awhile) i picked up something watching Psy's videos that i really like. Once you scout that a third hatch is on the way, sending out 6-8 zelots with +1 is really effective at forcing a cancel, and really cost effective too. The reason being, zerg generally hasn't made anything but lings yet, and +1 zelots tear through lings like crazy. one time i forced the cancel and lost all my zelots, and the other time i forced the cancel and survived with 2 zelots. Depending on where the third is it can also be safe to send the mothership core along too, since there's no AA sept for queens.

Something like that is what i meant when i said "theres better ways to deny expansions rather then investing in cannons at their expansion spots" since the cannons cant move and can be bypassed by the Z just expanding somewhere else

Commander

pat1487 wrote:: it leaves an opening at the front where theres a window to make something happen for the T

Definitelly true
I guess my point is that thats just how you have to deal with drops, and those are the risks you take, but if you micro really well your multitasking is better then you can end up surviving any big front push.

pat1487 wrote:: Something like that is what i meant when i said "theres better ways to deny expansions rather then investing in cannons at their expansion spots" since the cannons cant move and can be bypassed by the Z just expanding somewhere else

omgosh. and you weren't sharing the l33t strats when i was saying i sucked vs zerg?!?!? : P

idk yet if i always wanna do zelots over cannons.
It adds something completely different to multitask with. which is hard since im bad.
And now i know the reason i liked cannons so much before was cuz its easy to be aggressive with the probe im already using to dance around their first expo (denying with that circle micro + maybe dropping/canceling a pylon).
So it was just hte path of least resistance to aggression, even if it is more expensive.

pat1487 wrote:: I knew you wouldnt have a replay like that when i set the criteria because if a game had happened like that you would know what im talking about and wouldnt be arguing about it

I do know what you're talking about.
i guess i was exagerating whenever i talked about how easy it is for toss. But i liked talking like that cus thats how it feels once thigns snowball in your favor.

The thing is i do have plenty of terran replays, over 30 gold that i've saved recently. Plenty of them try and do splits, and plenty of them make ghosts. The thing is, they dont do it successfully. maybe they could be doing it succsessfully if i werne't microing. And maybe a diamond and platnum player can beat me every time with them, but then thats only [in my mind] cus they're micro'ing better than me. and there's plenty of things a toss can do to edge their way out vs those ghosts and infantry and emp's throughout the game. Then things snowball in your favor and it feels really easy. as if toss is unstopable.

I know im completely shifting ground and changing my arguments.
But i also think your completely right that the things i said in earlier posts were wrong in the way they were written.

I was just completely skipping the fact that theres a deadly game of back and fourth micro that can go either way, and only talking about the fact that if you manage to win that and they no longer have the ability to EMP and split their units, cus you won too many smaller battles earlier... THEN it becomes super easy.

But you're right, ghosts can own toss.

pat1487 wrote:: I think its weird that you didnt beleive me about tanks being good vs toss but do beleive that banelings are good against terran

Well. tank pretty good unit. i know better now.

The only real experience i have with zerg is watching games from Psy / husky/ day9. and the zerg alwaysalways makes baneligns so far as i can tell (and the terran almost invariably makes marines and widow mines). So whenever i play zerg i make zergling, banelings, and muta.
If you know any semi recent games with really effective zerg builds that leave out banelings vs terran, maybe i'd change my mind.

Psy actually goes on a lot of rants about how OP widow miens and marines are, and how much zergling baneling sucks, but he also says how there's no way for zerg's to survive without them. idk, maybe he's crazy. maybe im crazy.

(Might not have to watch all 22 minutes to believe me that he gets the banelings nest. but i wanted there to be proof : p)
He never really uses the banelings for aggression till he gets ultras, but he can always make them from the early game if the terran didn't stay bussy with the muta. Cus if all a zerg has is muta and theres nothing scary on the ground then they risk losing a base race.

Moderator

Achilles.42 wrote:: omgosh. and you weren't sharing the l33t strats when i was saying i sucked vs zerg?!?!? : P

Lol, i figured you knew what i meant
You dont have to specifically make zealots for it, just use whatever units youve been making to do some damage or deny expansions
Its basically the same multitasking as using oracles to harass, the only problem would be if you did that and used oracles at the same time, in that case i would just say go with 1 or the other

Achilles.42 wrote:: The thing is i do have plenty of terran replays, over 30 gold that i've saved recently. Plenty of them try and do splits, and plenty of them make ghosts. The thing is, they dont do it successfully. maybe they could be doing it succsessfully if i werne't microing. And maybe a diamond and platnum player can beat me every time with them, but then thats only [in my mind] cus they're micro'ing better than me. and there's plenty of things a toss can do to edge their way out vs those ghosts and infantry and emp's throughout the game. Then things snowball in your favor and it feels really easy. as if toss is unstopable.

The composition i was talking about before should trade equally with basic ghost micro and decent tank positioning and a good engagement angle
After that the terran should be able to out macro since the toss relies on expensive colossus and templars where as the terran has cheap and quick marauder hellbat medivac (unless the toss has a significant econ advantage), since templars dont start with enough energy to storm and collusus builds slowly theres a time where the terran can get way ahead after the major battle if he focuses on those while making a few ghosts and vikings (much less then before)

Achilles.42 wrote:: If you know any semi recent games with really effective zerg builds that leave out banelings vs terran, maybe i'd change my mind.
Psy actually goes on a lot of rants about how OP widow miens and marines are, and how much zergling baneling sucks, but he also says how there's no way for zerg's to survive without them. idk, maybe he's crazy. maybe im crazy.

People make banelings cause its really all zerg can do against rines, i think swarmhosts are a better option, but they arent even that good either
Psy is basically saying its required to use a crappy unit and rely on your enemy making mistakes in his micro (which is never something you want to be doing)
Baneling is supposed to be a hard counter to rine but its not since rines can soft counter them with stutter step and stim and zerg cant do anything without using fungal, but if you have fungal banelings are pointless, sure you can baneling the fungaled units but they will die from anything else anyway, roaches would be a better choice with fungal then baneling
In the game we played where i was z and you were t i shouldve made infestor for that first fight and more swarmhosts (and gotten that upgrade for the locusts that i always forget)
Really zerg needs lurkers back, i was hoping heart of the swarm would add them in, but they put in swarmhost instead which is like a crappy version of the lurker (against rine at least, against anything else its better)

Commander

pat1487 wrote:: People make banelings cause its really all zerg can do against rines, i think swarmhosts are a better option, but they arent even that good either
...
roaches would be a better choice with fungal then baneling
In the game we played where i was z and you were t i shouldve made infestor for that first fight and more swarmhosts (and gotten that upgrade for the locusts that i always forget)
...
but if you have fungal banelings are pointlesssure, sure you can baneling the fungaled units but they will die from anything else anyway,

Infesters are definitely really good. i had forgotten about them. I wish their fungal worked like storm, though, and didn't have a casting delay (Technically its a projectile delay, but whatever)

Roaches and swarm hosts are definitely better, but they're just both so immobile that its always hard to respond to terrans speed/mobility with them. Roaches with speed are about equal to banelings with speed i think, but ling-baneling with always have speed lings at the front to respond super quick while the baneling/infestor rolls in since you're forced to have zerglings (whereas with roach you could easily end up with no lings for that quick response)
Whereas toss is comparatively slow, so roachs, hydras, swarm-hosts works way better.

pat1487 wrote:: Psy is basically saying its required to use a crappy unit and rely on your enemy making mistakes in his micro (which is never something you want to be doing)

haha yeah. but if he's correct that theres not a good way to counter MMM otherwise, then he's still right that thats the best option.
I guess the zerg could go for baneling drops and that'd shift it to relying on his own skill

pat1487 wrote:: Baneling is supposed to be a hard counter to rine but its not since rines can soft counter them with stutter step and stim and zerg cant do anything without using fungal

Lol, yeah. baneligns counter marines. but stim'd marines counter banelings...

Also, just having enough marines counters banelings.
There was a pro game on last night at blizcon that i watched cuz day9 was casting. it was some guy named bomber(T) vs JDoung (Z)
And the Zerg was doing everything awesome with his muta, ling, and baneling attacks, and finally got The terran back form 3 base to 2 base, while he was on 4 base. But the terran had just maxed out his supply with Marine Medivac (didn't even have any marauders or mines) and just moved out and killed the zerg. It didn't matter that the zerg kept trying to remax and make more banelings and had creep across the entire map, cuz the terran just split his marines and stim stutter stepped when he could.

The casters were getting all excited about it.
And i guess its cool that his control is that good. But at the same time its kinda stupid that the first T1 unit you make with a race can also be the the only unit you need to make for the rest of the game, and everything else is just support.

pat1487 wrote:: Really zerg needs lurkers back, i was hoping heart of the swarm would add them in, but they put in swarmhost instead which is like a crappy version of the lurker (against rine at least, against anything else its better)

Yeah. toss has HT and Collosus to nullify marines, terrans have tanks and widow mines, but zerg has sooo much trouble dealing with them.

pat1487 wrote:: Its basically the same multitasking as using oracles to harass, the only problem would be if you did that and used oracles at the same time, in that case i would just say go with 1 or the other

Yeah, the more i do it the more i like it.
The on advantage i realized cannons have over it though is that it delays them remaking the hatch for much longer, and a lot of times forces them to get roaches sooner than they want to. or else, forces them to put a hatch in a bad spot thats easy to attack later.
-------

On a side note, i never realized how many tosses cheesed until now. it feels like every other game people are getting DTs. And every single game is a 1 base play.
Fortunately voidray counters DT's soooo hard since you just make an oracle and win.

Anyway, one of tosses i played yesterday had the 1000 win icon for toss, and i was kinda worried his control would be too good.
it looked like he was trying to go 3gate robo, with no expo, and he obviouslly started only making stalkers since i had voidrays. But his micro was so hard to deal with since voidrays and zelots are so slow he kept kiting the zelots to death and being able to engage the voidrays since i didn't have ground support.
Eventually i wore him down though, i kept cutting him off with the voids when he was kiting the zelots.
He raged pretty hard afterwords though. I didn't trash talk back at him cus i understand being upset about cheese. But i thought it was really funny that he felt that a 1 base all in with immortals was the high ground compared to a voidray all in. i guess it is, slightly, since im proxying, but still. Anything off of one base seems pretty equally cheesy to me.

Usually the people that go DT's are very polite and 'gg' when they lose, which i always think is nice of them.

I think in PvP there should be an invisible line that cuts the map in half thats impossible to cross for the first 10 minutes of the game, and all buildings have detection.

Moderator

Achilles.42 wrote:: Also, just having enough marines counters banelings.
There was a pro game on last night at blizcon that i watched cuz day9 was casting. it was some guy named bomber(T) vs JDoung (Z)
And the Zerg was doing everything awesome with his muta, ling, and baneling attacks, and finally got The terran back form 3 base to 2 base, while he was on 4 base. But the terran had just maxed out his supply with Marine Medivac (didn't even have any marauders or mines) and just moved out and killed the zerg. It didn't matter that the zerg kept trying to remax and make more banelings and had creep across the entire map, cuz the terran just split his marines and stim stutter stepped when he could.

The casters were getting all excited about it.
And i guess its cool that his control is that good. But at the same time its kinda stupid that the first T1 unit you make with a race can also be the the only unit you need to make for the rest of the game, and everything else is just support.

Yeah, i hate bomber because all he does is make marines, its really boring to watch after the first time i dont know why they always get excited about it

Achilles.42 wrote:: Anyway, one of tosses i played yesterday had the 1000 win icon for toss, and i was kinda worried his control would be too good.
it looked like he was trying to go 3gate robo, with no expo, and he obviouslly started only making stalkers since i had voidrays. But his micro was so hard to deal with since voidrays and zelots are so slow he kept kiting the zelots to death and being able to engage the voidrays since i didn't have ground support.
Eventually i wore him down though, i kept cutting him off with the voids when he was kiting the zelots.
He raged pretty hard afterwords though. I didn't trash talk back at him cus i understand being upset about cheese. But i thought it was really funny that he felt that a 1 base all in with immortals was the high ground compared to a voidray all in. i guess it is, slightly, since im proxying, but still. Anything off of one base seems pretty equally cheesy to me.

1 base 3gate robo all in isnt cheese and is def the high ground when compared to void proxy
One base all ins arent cheesy on their own

Commander

pat1487 wrote:: 1 base 3gate robo all in isnt cheese and is def the high ground when compared to void proxy
One base all ins arent cheesy on their own

oh, i geuess you dont know how cheese works. If im attacked at any point before im ready then its cheese. and whenever i decide to attack its skillful play : D : D : D

idk what you mean by 'on their own' tho.

pat1487 wrote:: Yeah, i hate bomber because all he does is make marines, its really boring to watch after the first time i dont know why they always get excited about it

for real

Moderator

Achilles.42 wrote:: idk what you mean by 'on their own' tho.

Like void proxy or dt rush is done on 1 base but 1 base isnt always something like void proxy or dt rush

Commander

edit /(Sorry if hteres a ton of mistakes, i wrote more than i thought i was going to and have to go to work so im not gonna have time to read though this at all)/

So, a knew season started today.
They added 2 new maps,
star station (2 player map with a lot of xel naga towers(4))
and a 4 player macro map.

They also took out whilrwind, and akilon wastes. I'd be more upset about losing wirldwind, but some times there'd be no good third to take vs terran on that map depending on spawn location (Because drops would be OP, or else you'd be way to close to his base). I also dont really mind losing akilon wasts because i didn't like the split through the middle that that map had.

I dont have many feelings about star station. im not the biggest fan of watch towers though, so idk if i will like it.

But the macro map is awesome. your natural is enclosed in your own base, which is a dream come true for me. and your third/4th are both pretty easy to take. better than wirlwind was. And the ramp is a normal 1v1 style ramp, so you can still wall it off really easily : D : D

I didn't play either of the new maps they added for 3v3's
But they removed vault of secrets (or maybe it was shadow reactor) and 'sand cannon' i think it was called. Both of which i had veto'd because they made rushes practically impossible to hold off. Im hoping they replaced them with more balanced maps, but im still amazed at how much the team maps discourage macro play.

I also checked wings of liberty, and it doesn't seem like they've changed any maps at all since i played there how ever many seasons ago, which kinda annoys me. They could at least cycle through the maps they already have in the pool. Theres dozens of 1v1 maps : /
-------------

So, i started playing some unranked zerg games,
but jk--the game started before i realized it was actually ranked.
I dont know how i end up doing this so much. but this is practically the 10th game that i've started ranked games when i meant to do unranked. some times i dont even notice untill after

It was a ZvZ, i was gonna 10 pool the guy with speedlings,
the guy 7pooled me, pulled workers, and started a spine on my creep. i didn't have any lings yet, cuz i had been planning to go up to 16 workers, and my speed was nowhere near done cuz i forgot to put guys on gas.

and of course he sniped my queen, which sucked, but i at least got 1 or 2 injects with it.

I kept spamming spines, but had to cancel all of them cuz he kept surrounding them
i kept driving him off with lings/drones (Back to his spine) then mining.
I got enough money for a decent number of lings, and i surrounded his spine with my workers and lings while he was trying to move it, and was then able to kill all his lings/drones.

I had 8 workers left at the end of that, which was probably a lot more than he had. He ran in with 4 lings again to see what i had, then GG'd and left.

Hilariouslly, winning that game (which put me at 2/2) gave me gold.

---

I played 2 more games after that, unranked for reals this time.

The first one was vs a gold protoss with the 1000 solo win icon. i knew i'd lose that one since usually people are masters-ish players if they have that much experience.
And this guy kept up a pretty constant stream of harass through the whole game. Zelots from pylons and warp prisoms eevverryyywhere. i went roach hydra, into swarmhost hydra.

He pushed wiht 4 collosus right as my swarmhosts finished, and i only barely held it off, and he put me on 2 base, and he went up to 4. but i ''remaxed" to 150/200, with swarmhost hydra, and started pummeling his 3rd. I kept reinforcing and got myself back on a 4base econ.

He was never able to break through hydra/locust to swarmhosts, so i killed his 3rd and 4th, and he GG'd : D : D

When i checked though, he wasn't masters. all he had was a bunch of 1v1 gold, and platnum team, finishes. which confused me, but oh well.
He still had a lot of experience and was probably better than i am with toss. (luckilly zerg OP vs toss : P)
---

The second game was vs a gold terran. (former plat with 4k games. i forgot to check which year tho)

Fuck terran. fuck all terrans.

Game took an hour and twelve minutes.

He ran widow mines into both my natural and my main before i had a lair, so i had to make 2 spores.
I was only expecting hellion harass if anything after that, so i just made drones, but he micro'd 5-10 more mines into my minerals after that, and i kept having to micro to save drones and kill the mines.
Slightly less annoying than it is when they do it to toss. but it was still bs.

He followed this up with a clocked banshee, which was the dumbest transition ever, since i had made spores and extra queens to deal with the widow mines, but whatever. That didn't do any damage.

i got on 3 base cuz im a pro. and went ling-baneling- muta, which is pretty good vs MMM.

Unfortunately he blindly went Mech. I guess blindly going mech makes sense if your betting your opponent is going to blindly going ling, bane, muta. But i still think its stupid, MMM is too good.

I had also never played on this map before. (polar night) and really dumb third and fourth bases. (i skipped right to my 5th and 6th locations some how).

This made it really easy for him to harass with singular hell bats. he got them the blue flame upgrade, which is a big part of why i say fuck terrans. that thing 2 shots drones and 1 shots lings, so i kept having to respond with my mutas. and they take so many shots from spines to kill that he still killed all my drones when i had 3 spines in each patch. and he kept doing that allll game long. sending singular hellbats and just killing all my workers.

I teched up to ultras. they were 2/2 + kiteness plating, 3/3 on the way. With the mutas i still had alive I attacked his main base and killed all his workers, which made him try to go for a base trade, but i had good creep spread and moved back with mutas just in time to engage with my main army, i was also able to spawn a bunch of banelings (cuz of pro creep spread).
Normally lings work as DPS and a meet shield with ultras, but htey were completely useless because of his hellbats.

aparently hellbat, thor, tank (unsieged) beats muta, ling, baneling, ultra, cuz i had twice his army value, and somehow only barely won, i remaxed instantly with ultra and started broodlord tech, but he wrecked my econ with harass at the same time of his main attack, so by the time i had lost enough units to make broodlords, i didn't even have the money.
Anyway, i put him on 2 base, and the rest of hte game was each of us trying to deny bases while trying to get the right composition.
he kept switching between 'Thor hellbat' 'pure tank' and 'viking, raven'

Was insanely furstrating.

Turned out ultra + roach was the answer for his ground compisitions, and mass muta was the answer for his air.

Broodlords would'a been fine if i had maxed with them before he started viking production, and if i had a lot of muta/corrupter/hydra to support them.

At the end of an hour and twelve minutes i finally won though.
But ZvT is really frustrating. i had 160 apm at the end, and i dont think much of it was spam, cuz the whole game i felt like i was trying to get to 50 different things that i didn't have time for, yet his apm was 60. (my apm was also higher than it was in the 10 minute ZvZ where half the game i definitlly was just spamming apm)
I know apm doesn't mean anything, but it makes me feel like terran has so much less they have to do to win compared to zerg : (
It also felt like i had to buld exactly the right units, or id lose wildly (like i almost did with ultra ling vs thor tank hell bat in the beginning) and the terran can just build whatever he wants /RRAAAGGGGEEE

the world's all about ach - Page 5 Screen11

EDIT: i also just discovered that its completely false that the highest you can place into is Platnum. Psy did his placement and placed straight into masters.

The platinum thing must only be true for when it makes you do 5 placement matches.

Commander

So, something weird happens to MMR when you dont play for awhile.
I was ranked #1 gold from about 300 wins the last time i played WoL, i did my placement match (silver) and started playing cuz i was curious of the differences between WoL and HoTS play. Anyway, i figured i was near the top of silver league, but it started matching me up to people that had no idea how to play (not insulting them, but, had 25 games + didn't know to make orbitals, so not many other ways to describe them)
I kept playing cuz i wasn't sure if i was just getting lucky or not, and i had 2 win streaks of 10 games, that were only punctuated by losses to cheeses that i misread. it finally started matching me up vs some easy gold players, so my my league is probably about to go up if i kept playing with it. But i guess your MMR decays over time, which i really wish it didn't, but maybe the system would be really hard to balance otherwise. idk.

-------
They also posted a balance update a few days ago.

The main changes were:
Terran: they combined weapons upgrades for mech air/ground.
And they nerfed widow mines splash damage. They made it so it scales with how far away a unit is, which is how most splash damage abilities work (siege tanks, banelings, etc.) so it really should have been like that from the start. But now it takes two shots to kill huge groups of workers. It will still one shot 2+ workers, but that seems perfectly fair to me.

I know pat said that you could just use 2 widow mines now and its the same thing, but because of how random the targeting AI can be, there is rarely perfect overlap of the splash damage, so i think it does make a big difference.

They still seem too strong vs Mutas. Especially since terran already has marines and repairable turrets that are very good vs them.

Protoss: Increased oracle speed from 3.75 to 4, and increased acceleration from 2 to 3.
I really like this change.
Oracles were always a fun unit, but they were frustrating because of how unnatural their acceleration felt. But now it feels fair when you screw up and lose one.
Also, i've had oracles used against me several times and they don't feel OP, i didn't take much damage.

The main thing that makes oracles feel OP is because if you miss one for a few seconds you can take huuggee amounts of damage. But its the exact same way with any sort of worker line harass/drop. And oracles will never kill your tech.

I've been playing around with a variant to my PvP proxy straight because of the oracle change. In the variant, the first unit i make with the stargaze is an oracle, and the first unit i make with my gateway is a sentry.
I find as many weaknesses as i can, and then when his reaction time gets too good, my sentry has enough energy for a hallucination, and i hallucinate an oracle that i fly into his mineral line, then attack his other mineral line with my real oracle (obviously the second part only applies if we get off of 1 base)

The oracle is a lot of fun though, because its easy to spot if they move out for a 1 base attack in response to the harass, which makes it fairly straightforward to prepare for (plus the oracle generally gives complete scouting of his tech) and the more he commits to attacking with the more damage your oracle can do, which gives you a really nice lead so long as you survive.

Zerg: Increased burrowed roach movement speed to 2 (not sure what it was before)

But this seems dumb to me. The roach is a core unit of a lot of unit compositions, its not a DT or a Banshee thats only role is to be a cutesy harass unit, so idk why they're trying to buff its cutesyness.
(The fact that its underutilized doesn't mean anything. cuz there's a thousand game mechanics that are underutilized that they completely ignore (im not applying the same logic to the oracle, cuz the oracle is a HoTS unit, so i figure they care a lot more about making those playable))
I think zerg deserved some sort of buff for the early/mid game. Cuz once i stopped trying to macro into the late game vs them, the game became so much easier. 2 Base all ins just seem way too good vs zerg.
Force fields counter all their pre-lair units. because of how their macro works they have units coming from each base that they have, which requires a lot of multitasking while their defending so that they don't get shitty engagements, and it means you can forcefield off their main and only engage half of your army (or rush into their main and do the same thing in reverse). Also, if you're using a warp prism before they get a lair than you have infinity reinforcements that cant be cut off.

Idk. maybe make zerglings ranged and able to shoot up : P

Moderator

Achilles.42 wrote:: maybe make zerglings ranged and able to shoot up : P

i absolutely wish that a unit being able to attack air was just termed "able to shoot up"

Moderator

Achilles.42 wrote:: EDIT: i also just discovered that its completely false that the highest you can place into is Platnum. Psy did his placement and placed straight into masters.

The platinum thing must only be true for when it makes you do 5 placement matches.

Yeah you can place back into the league you were in from the last season
Its just you were in WoL then hots after the reset so this is your first second season since the season from wol didnt count when you went to hots

Achilles.42 wrote:: So, something weird happens to MMR when you dont play for awhile.
I was ranked #1 gold from about 300 wins the last time i played WoL, i did my placement match (silver) and started playing cuz i was curious of the differences between WoL and HoTS play. Anyway, i figured i was near the top of silver league, but it started matching me up to people that had no idea how to play (not insulting them, but, had 25 games + didn't know to make orbitals, so not many other ways to describe them)
I kept playing cuz i wasn't sure if i was just getting lucky or not, and i had 2 win streaks of 10 games, that were only punctuated by losses to cheeses that i misread. it finally started matching me up vs some easy gold players, so my my league is probably about to go up if i kept playing with it. But i guess your MMR decays over time, which i really wish it didn't, but maybe the system would be really hard to balance otherwise. idk.

Ive never seen what your talking about
Even after not playing for 2 years i was still matched up against people that at least knew the basics when i started playing again (high bronze, low silver quality)
The people you're describing are like the bottom tier of bronze league, no idea how you ended up playing against them
Im pretty sure your RT 2v2 3v3 and 4v4 effects your 1v1 mmr (solo and RT mmr is shared) so if youve been losing a lot there it may have dragged you down
And im pretty sure its shared because i placed into plat 3v3 RT and have only ever play RT with you and since you placed into gold it must have pulled my plat from somewhere since if it didnt we both shouldve got gold
In 1v1 i was in silver but i was being put up against mostly plat people for the short time i played last season, so im guessing my mmr is around high gold low plat level and i just didnt play enough 1v1 games for it to promote me
We did our 3v3s after i placed into silver and was being put up against plats and we won most of the placements there so thats how it put me in plat im guessing (when we play with a random 3rd person it counts as RT)

Achilles.42 wrote:: -------
They also posted a balance update a few days ago.

The main changes were:
Terran: they combined weapons upgrades for mech air/ground.

I still hate this change, people still use MMM, but now its just easier to get viking/tank to mix in with the MMM
Also tanks got an attack speed buff so its even better

Achilles.42 wrote:: And they nerfed widow mines splash damage. They made it so it scales with how far away a unit is, which is how most splash damage abilities work (siege tanks, banelings, etc.) so it really should have been like that from the start. But now it takes two shots to kill huge groups of workers. It will still one shot 2+ workers, but that seems perfectly fair to me.

I know pat said that you could just use 2 widow mines now and its the same thing, but because of how random the targeting AI can be, there is rarely perfect overlap of the splash damage, so i think it does make a big difference.

You can manually aim it after you burrow it since theres a delay before it attacks, so 2 of them still work like 1 did before, just with a tiny bit of extra micro
Im not against this change though, at least its something, i just wish it worked more like storm where you can move out of its aoe after it hits (or i wish storm worked more like mines where all of its damage was done instantly)

Cause you have to admit, storm is like an inferior version of mines, 1 mine has half as much splash as storm does (in about the same radius) but its instant, so 2 mines (150 minerals, 50 gas) deal as much damage as a storm from 1 ht (50 minerals, 150 gas) but it does it instantly in a slightly smaller radius with less micro and no energy requirement
The patch barely changed that, storm radius is 1.5 and deals 80 damage for 4 seconds (10 dmg every half second), widow mine radius (where stuff takes the full 40 splash damage) is 1.25, so 2 mines still better then ht (not even counting the extra dmg it does outside that 1.25 radius), just not as good as they were before the patch, plus they require minerals instead of gas so they are easier to get too

Achilles.42 wrote:: Zerg: Increased burrowed roach movement speed to 2 (not sure what it was before)

But this seems dumb to me. The roach is a core unit of a lot of unit compositions, its not a DT or a Banshee thats only role is to be a cutesy harass unit, so idk why they're trying to buff its cutesyness.
(The fact that its underutilized doesn't mean anything. cuz there's a thousand game mechanics that are underutilized that they completely ignore (im not applying the same logic to the oracle, cuz the oracle is a HoTS unit, so i figure they care a lot more about making those playable))
I think zerg deserved some sort of buff for the early/mid game. Cuz once i stopped trying to macro into the late game vs them, the game became so much easier. 2 Base all ins just seem way too good vs zerg.
Force fields counter all their pre-lair units. because of how their macro works they have units coming from each base that they have, which requires a lot of multitasking while their defending so that they don't get shitty engagements, and it means you can forcefield off their main and only engage half of your army (or rush into their main and do the same thing in reverse). Also, if you're using a warp prism before they get a lair than you have infinity reinforcements that cant be cut off.

Idk. maybe make zerglings ranged and able to shoot up : P

I think increased burrow speed was supposed to be a buff to mid game since you can use roach burrow similar to blink micro with stalkers when you blink them out of attack range when they are at low hp to make the AI target a unit with more hp or to make the player focus that unit and move forward instead of attacking (it actually works better with roaches since they regen fast while burrowed, especially if the enemy doesnt have detection during that battle)
With 2 movement speed they can get out of range faster if you use them like that (people rarely use them like that though)
Alternatively you can use roaches to flank an army that doesnt have detection quicker and more surprisingly

Serenity09 wrote:: i absolutely wish that a unit being able to attack air was just termed "able to shoot up"

No no, that would be confusing since you can clearly see immortals are able to shoot up when they target a building that lifts off
You can see them aim their cannons up at it as it lifts, maybe even get a shot off at it in the air, but then they are like "Eh... fuck it... the void rays can handle that, im too old for this shit" and they aim back down
Other units could shoot up too if they wanted, colossus, marauder, banshee, broodlords, roaches, so if there was a term like "able to shoot up" in the game then those units would have to have something like "able to shoot up (but refuses to do so)"
But marauders do shoot up, stim packs, so they would have to have "able to shoot up (but refuses to do so, unless its drug related)"
So you can see how it would get confusing

Commander

pat1487 wrote:: Ive never seen what your talking about
Even after not playing for 2 years i was still matched up against people that at least knew the basics when i started playing again (high bronze, low silver quality)
The people you're describing are like the bottom tier of bronze league, no idea how you ended up playing against them

yeah. I dont get it either.
I went 30-6 and got myself back in gold league. I had more fun playing my old WoL strats than i thought i would. Plus, with zerg i can do the exact same 2 base strat i use for HoTS, but would one base everyone else, so it is kinda convenient to grind wins vs terran/protoss, but then practice the 15-20 minute cheesy game i actually like playing vs zerg.

pat1487 wrote:: Im pretty sure your RT 2v2 3v3 and 4v4 effects your 1v1 mmr (solo and RT mmr is shared)

I'd bet marks sister that it gives everyone a different MMR for each matchup, both for ranked and unranked. So, with 1v1s - 4v4s and FFA's you have 9 sets of MMR.
I can do an expiriment some time where i wreck my 1v1 mmr on liberty, and boost my 2v2 RT ranking to as high as i can right before a new season, then see what i place into for both. (Im pretty sure it'd be bronze for 1v1 and gold/plat for the 2v2s, and then it'd match me against completely different sets of players)
This is why we see a lot of platnum, diamond, and masters players while we're doing teams. Cuz our MMR for teams is obviouslly no where near their MMR for 1v1's, but since no1 takes team games seriously, all our MMR's are pretty close together, and we all get matched together.

pat1487 wrote:: I think increased burrow speed was supposed to be a buff to mid game since you can use roach burrow similar to blink micro with stalkers when you blink them out of attack range when they are at low hp to make the AI target a unit with more hp or to make the player focus that unit and move forward instead of attacking (it actually works better with roaches since they regen fast while burrowed, especially if the enemy doesnt have detection during that battle)
With 2 movement speed they can get out of range faster if you use them like that (people rarely use them like that though)
Alternatively you can use roaches to flank an army that doesnt have detection quicker and more surprisingly

I do like the change more when you put it like that.

I Guess i just wanted to see zerglings carrying machine guns everywhere.
OOOO. or make all overlords like mothership cores!! and give them defensive attacks and abilities.
Maybe make it so they have to be in-proximity of a hatchery for them to work!!!

pat1487 wrote:: No no, that would be confusing since you can clearly see immortals are able to shoot up when they target a building that lifts off
You can see them aim their cannons up at it as it lifts, maybe even get a shot off at it in the air, but then they are like "Eh... fuck it... the void rays can handle that, im too old for this shit" and they aim back down
Other units could shoot up too if they wanted, colossus, marauder, banshee, broodlords, roaches, so if there was a term like "able to shoot up" in the game then those units would have to have something like "able to shoot up (but refuses to do so)"
But marauders do shoot up, stim packs, so they would have to have "able to shoot up (but refuses to do so, unless its drug related)"
So you can see how it would get confusing

rofl
-----
WoL protoss is so ridiculous though.
Its basically impossible to do a macro opening against any matchup but Zerg.
I dont have much trouble going barracks > expand as terran, but there was no way to get anything short of a 1gate robo expand to work.
(3 gate robo all in ftw)

Moderator

Achilles.42 wrote:: I'd bet marks sister that it gives everyone a different MMR for each matchup, both for ranked and unranked. So, with 1v1s - 4v4s and FFA's you have 9 sets of MMR.
I can do an expiriment some time where i wreck my 1v1 mmr on liberty, and boost my 2v2 RT ranking to as high as i can right before a new season, then see what i place into for both. (Im pretty sure it'd be bronze for 1v1 and gold/plat for the 2v2s, and then it'd match me against completely different sets of players)
This is why we see a lot of platnum, diamond, and masters players while we're doing teams. Cuz our MMR for teams is obviouslly no where near their MMR for 1v1's, but since no1 takes team games seriously, all our MMR's are pretty close together, and we all get matched together.

Then how do you explain why it put me in plat and you in gold for our 3v3 RTs even though the only rt ive ever done was those 3v3 rts with you

Commander

Pat1487 wrote:: Then how do you explain why it put me in plat and you in gold for our 3v3 RTs even though the only rt ive ever done was those 3v3 rts with you

Cuz i've played plenty of rt's without you.

Also, once our MMR diverges for even one game, each game that we play after that it should cause us to drift apart, since the fact that we have different values associated with each of us (and i assume that it uses both the MMR of your teammates and opponents to calculate MMR rewards) means we'll be rewarded and punished differently each game. and those differences combined with the games i played solo added up to you being plat and me being gold.

Moderator

Quote :: Cuz i've played plenty of rt's without you.

Im pretty sure when we first placed that you didnt, when we both first got hots, the first time we placed is what i meant, not this last time