the world's all about ach

i got level five through the starter edition of HoTS. I think that means im officially one level better than you in everything, pat.

Ok. i just played through the WoT campaign. which was really fun, but it managed to really piss me off at the last possible second.

I had been playing without using any of the upgrades (any of them) since the game was easy enough on normal without them, and i figured id save them for when i needed them on hard/brutal.

Then i get to the supernova mission where you stay ahead of that stupid wall of fire that makes no sense for a supernova/sun spot situation, but whatever. And i hit a wall (both the litteral wall a proverbial one) where i cant get through it on normal.

Its late and im tired, so i just switch to casual mode after the 10th try rather than spend any time looking at the upgrades, and plan on coming back to it later.

However, the next day when i start playing through i realize i cant select any of the later mission on anything but casual now. even though it will let me use the dropdown menue, when i get out of the mission it says i beat it on casual.

So im like, whatever, i have to beat a few missions again.
But now i also realize there's no way for me to use the upgrades that i needed to beat the supernova mission, and i really dont feel like trying to beat it without them. since it was an extremely unenjoyable mission for me, forgetting the fact that it was also really difficult without any upgrades.


So yeah, besides that it was a really cool campaign.
It should have explained and had warnings plastered that if you dont get an upgrade in your first run through you'll never be able to get them when you go back in the mission select.

i always did supernova by massing banshees bottom right corner and clearing out just that corner then waiting till the firewall destroyed most of their base. then at the last possible second running in and destroying the artifact thingy

Ohhh. i wish i had thought of that.

i started playing through it again, cuz i dont like that it tells me i beat it on casual. 
But playing i might have to switch down to just hard, cuz 'brutal' is a pain in the ass.

Guesswhogotgold!Guesswhogotgold!Guesswhogotgold!Guesswhogotgold!
Guesswhogotgold!Guesswhogotgold!Guesswhogotgold!Guesswhogotgold!
Guesswhogotgold!
Disguy
Disguy
Disguy
Disguy
Disguy
Disguy
Disguy
[/url]

im far. far. far. too happy about this

yea you are

You're just jealous of my sc2 skills mark. mad jealous

Yep

So, i was wondering how it would work if i got HoTS. Specifically. do all my ladder stats get wiped? or only the stats for the current season that im in? would it make sense to wait until the season ends? or will it not make a difference?

The hots ladder and wol ladder are 2 different things, so if you want to play hots ladder you would have to start over on the hots ladder
Your wol ladder standing wouldnt be effected at all, you could even still play it by selecting wol from the menu

Theres really no reason to get hots though since there arent that many new units in ladder
Unless you want to play the campaign, but even then, the hots campaign is already installed on your computer, just downgrade your sc2 to 2.05, start it in offline mode, and load up a save game thats saved at the very start of the campaign

So, i thought gold players were much better till i became one and played a bunch.

They all suck compared to pat. and maybe seren. but i have no idea how seren plays cus he's too bussy having a "job" and all that jaz.

ALSO, i made it into the top ten for gold woooooo
star on my rank ftw
--------

Also, thoughts on defending a tank/marine/maruader drop? keeping in mind i usually do my pylon > nexus build.

i think i would have been able to kill it if i had let them do more damage in my base, and just warped in enough units and finished chrono boosting out a few void rays.

I had put 2 cannons by my minerals, cuz i knew a drop was coming, but it wasn't enough, and i let my units run in before i had any good numbers

me and pat were even-ish
we used to play 2's a lot and one or the other of us would do really well while the other sucked. it was weird
we didn't 1v1 all that much

well. since im gold 1 vs 1, and me and pat are silver 2vs2. im gonna assume pat's the week link and you were just carrying him to diamond/plat

yeah pat was the "week" link but only every first week of the month

Achilles.42 wrote:

Also, thoughts on defending a tank/marine/maruader drop? keeping in mind i usually do my pylon > nexus build.

i think i would have been able to kill it if i had let them do more damage in my base, and just warped in enough units and finished chrono boosting out a few void rays.

I had put 2 cannons by my minerals, cuz i knew a drop was coming, but it wasn't enough, and i let my units run in before i had any good numbers

Your going nexus first?
So your build order is like 9 pylon, 16 nexus, 16 gateway?
You're going to loose to early pressure almost every time like that, especially once they know thats what you did cause they will push harder
So if the drop comes early you cant defend against it with that build since you just wont have the army to deal with it until your econ advantage kicks in (which takes awhile, if you look at the resource collection graph of some of our past games where i was on 1 base and you had 2 youll see that even with 1 base my resource collection was higher then your 2 base for quite some time)
Even if you're doing forge fast expand, which is like 9 pylon, 12 forge, 17 nexus, the drop will bypass the wall you made so it cant be defended since you definitely wont have the army for it

As for defending drops without fast espanding, its still a pain in the ass for toss
You can put observers in areas of the map where medivacs will fly across to get to your mineral line to know when its coming so that you can react asap to stop it

If they drop before you put observers in place, move your probes away and move part of your army in (just enough to deal with it) and then resume mining while your fighting (avoid letting your probes get hit by tank splash though)

The main problem, and hardest part, is that good players will wait for you to move out and then drop while your army is out of position
Observer placement is really the only way to deal with that so that you know when to pull back, or a base trade, but toss will usually loose to terran in a base trade simply because they can lift of and fly away

Cannons are more for muta/banshee/dt, and even then they are really only good when they have units to back them up

Achilles.42 wrote:

well. since im gold 1 vs 1, and me and pat are silver 2vs2. im gonna assume pat's the week link and you were just carrying him to diamond/plat :D:D

I played more 1v1 then seren, was plat in it like 2ish years ago, probably couldve been diamond but i didnt play enough to rank up
I ended up as like 100 or 99 in my division from just not playing and getting bumped down the list as other people went up

pat1487 wrote:

So your build order is like 9 pylon, 16 nexus, 16 gateway?
You're going to loose to early pressure almost every time like that, especially once they know thats what you did cause they will push harder

The only reason i havn't lost more with it, i think, is because i've been very proactive with my scouting. so i make the judgement whether to go forge > expand, nexus >expand, or regular, gateway > cybo core.
Like, i do nexus first almost every time with terran, which has worked well.
Vs zerg i do forge fast expand, unless i see that they're late on spawning pool, in which case ill do my nexus expand. (this happens a lot with players that random zerg).
Vs Protoss i just shoot myself in the face.
I should go back to cheesing protoss, cus i dont really have a good way of dealing with them yet.

Pat1487 wrote:

As for defending drops without fast espanding...

Fanks

Pat1487 wrote:

Cannons are more for muta/banshee/dt, and even then they are really only good when they have units to back them up

Yeah, thats why i get them. im usually late getting observers, so they can easily have invis before i have any detection.

-------------------

it was a big day for me, though.
i was getting stuck versus the better zerg players before, cuz when i'd go gateway units + voidray they'd just mass hydralisk and kill me
(it happened even when they went muta, because i was able to easily counter them with stargate units, but when they transitioned away i'd get destroyed. it took a few games before i realized how hard voidrays are countered by hydra)
But, i then realized i just had to transition to colossus, and i'd id destroy any mass ground army he could make. I usually had a good number of void rays still around, combined with zelots with any extra money = win for me

--------------------

So, i've mentioned this before. but i fuck'ing detest mass carrier, or battlecruiser. people just go off of two base, but build so much defensive crap that there's a very small window where you can attack them without disadvantaging yourself so much.
But its fucking impossible to lose against it unless you're retarded. you just contain them in their dumb little two base. expand litterly everywhere. and mass carrier right back at them. but you'll do it faster cuz you'll have more income, and once the fighting starts you can just mass warp in to replenish your supply.

but its soooo fucking borrrrriiiinnnggggggg. and then at the end of the game you see this asshole with like 5apm, that somehow got himself into gold.

(its actually impressively hard to counter carriers if they max their supply with them though)
when i was silver i thought "pheonix's, stalkers, and voidrays will counter this"
Maxed my supply, expanded to the entire map.
lost my entire army. warped it back in (and used the 20 stargates i had)
and burned my way through a maxed out and upgraded army 3 -5 times over.
Keeping in mind he couldn't train many more units cuz he was off of 2 bases, and i had the entire map. (and no, i didn't have my entire supply filled with probes, i only had like 60 or 70)

Achilles.42 wrote:

The only reason i havn't lost more with it, i think, is because i've been very proactive with my scouting. so i make the judgement whether to go forge > expand, nexus >expand, or regular, gateway > cybo core.
Like, i do nexus first almost every time with terran, which has worked well.
Vs zerg i do forge fast expand, unless i see that they're late on spawning pool, in which case ill do my nexus expand. (this happens a lot with players that random zerg).
Vs Protoss i just shoot myself in the face.
I should go back to cheesing protoss, cus i dont really have a good way of dealing with them yet.

I really dont see the benefit to going nexus first, youll delay everything so much to get the nexus out that you will just lose outright to the any early attack
Scouting that early isnt going to tell you that they wont go for early aggression
For example, zerg can get 13 hatch, 14 pool, drone until 2nd hatch is up, 1 round of lings for 12 of them and you are screwed
Terran can kill it with the standard build if they get reactor on 2nd barracks as soon as they hit 50 gas and pump rines, even if you scout it you wouldve already had to put the nexus down and delay everything so it would be too late to fix it even if you cancel the nexus (unless the map was huge)

Achilles.42 wrote:

it was a big day for me, though.
i was getting stuck versus the better zerg players before, cuz when i'd go gateway units + voidray they'd just mass hydralisk and kill me
(it happened even when they went muta, because i was able to easily counter them with stargate units, but when they transitioned away i'd get destroyed. it took a few games before i realized how hard voidrays are countered by hydra)
But, i then realized i just had to transition to colossus, and i'd id destroy any mass ground army he could make. I usually had a good number of void rays still around, combined with zelots with any extra money = win for me

Zerg will always be able to transition faster then the other races, so if you managed to transition to colossus and win it just means the zerg wasnt scouting, because if they knew that you were transitioning it wouldnt have worked

Achilles.42 wrote:

So, i've mentioned this before. but i fuck'ing detest mass carrier, or battlecruiser. people just go off of two base, but build so much defensive crap that there's a very small window where you can attack them without disadvantaging yourself so much.
But its fucking impossible to lose against it unless you're retarded. you just contain them in their dumb little two base. expand litterly everywhere. and mass carrier right back at them. but you'll do it faster cuz you'll have more income, and once the fighting starts you can just mass warp in to replenish your supply.

but its soooo fucking borrrrriiiinnnggggggg. and then at the end of the game you see this asshole with like 5apm, that somehow got himself into gold.

People that mass carrier/bc in 1v1 are noobs
In plat and above its impossible to mass carrier/bc because people end the game before it gets to that point, so you rarely see anyone build them there, even if the game ends up going on for a long time

Achilles.42 wrote:

(its actually impressively hard to counter carriers if they max their supply with them though)

Thats why they are in gold, players in silver/gold let them reach max supply of carriers and cant stop them
You really shouldnt let them reach max supply of carriers

Achilles.42 wrote:

when i was silver i thought "pheonix's, stalkers, and voidrays will counter this"

Phoenixes suck vs heavy units, they arent general AA, they are AA specific to light units like muta/banshee/phoenixes (in PvP you should never get phoenix really) so never use them against anything other then those 3 units (i havent tried them against medivacs, 2 or 3 phoenixs might actually help stop drops, it would be worth looking into to see if that could work)
Voidrays deal extra damage to heavy units, and are your best bet (with stalker support) against carriers/bc

Achilles.42 wrote:

Maxed my supply, expanded to the entire map.
lost my entire army. warped it back in (and used the 20 stargates i had)
and burned my way through a maxed out and upgraded army 3 -5 times over.
Keeping in mind he couldn't train many more units cuz he was off of 2 bases, and i had the entire map. (and no, i didn't have my entire supply filled with probes, i only had like 60 or 70)

Think about the math of that ach
Each base supports 24 mineral collectors and 6 gas collectors, 2 bases is 60 supply worth of workers when fully maxed out
They are getting less minerals because the mineral line is over saturated, but it doesnt matter, they will be collecting plenty of minerals to support carriers
Their main problem is gas collection, since its only 4 gysers, but it is enough to get max supply of carriers out (slowly, which is why you should be able to kill them before they max out)
But since you didnt do that, if you take all the bases and load up on gysers you end up with 6*(number of basses collecting gas) worth of worker supply that isnt collecting minerals
So lets say you have 5 bases collecting gas, thats half your supply of workers that arent collecting minerals, so your mineral collection rate is about the same amount as the guy on 2 bases (probably less in that example)
The only advantage you have like that is that you will last longer since he will eventually just run out of resources, which is why those games will go on forever and be boring

There is such a thing as having too many bases, in fact ive said this before:

Pat1487 wrote:

The reason you shouldnt go above 3 is because youll have too much of your supply in workers, 3 bases will mean you should have around 60-70 workers, which is 60 supply taken up by non combat units, if you have 4 bases going at the same time that will be around 80-90 supply in workers which only leaves you with about half of the rest of your supply for your army

That didnt mean to make more then 3 but still only have 60-70 workers, it meant that each base should have 16 mineral collectors and 6 gas collectors which works out to 60-70 workers
So 3 should be the max number of bases you make at any 1 time for terran/toss (zerg can have more since their units dont take up as much supply so having a bit more of your supply taken up by drones isnt that big of a deal)

pat1487 wrote:

I really dont see the benefit to going nexus first

nine times out'a ten expanding early makes people feel they have to attack me first. they dont like letting me sit there and macro.

And i like that. I like people having to make the first move on me, me defending, and then figuring out how to attack from there.

Also, i wish i had the video, but according to husky the high level play is shifting away from the 1 base/2 base early game plans. Im getting ready for the future pat!! thats why nexus first is so supa dupa wonderful.
its the spirit that it has.
not the functionality of it.
------------------------

pat1487 wrote:

Zerg will always be able to transition faster then the other races, so if you managed to transition to colossus and win it just means the zerg wasnt scouting, because if they knew that you were transitioning it wouldnt have worked

I had stayed on void rays + gateway units for too long, and had only barely been able to hold on, but then i popped out with 6 colossus and a nearly maxed army and was like *bam*

He actually did almost manage to transition back to muta/corrupter, and managed to kill off most of my voidrays (my only aa apart from gateway units).
but it was too late!!

pat1487 wrote:

There is such a thing as having too many bases

blasphemer!!
begone heathen!

pat1487 wrote:

Think about the math of that ach

i did.
and the math is that if i have a bajillion jillion bases then even if he crushes my army half a bajillion times i can still win a base race.

pat1487 wrote:

ill wait till tomorow to respond

you're basically the main reason i have trust issues, pat.

You and oatmeal raisin cookies masquerading as chocolate chip
--------

Additionally, why didn't you warn me about going nexus first? its fracking retarded, early pressure is impossible to deal with--idk how i was deluding myself.
im still forge fast expanding against zerg. but thats it. its nothing but 3gate robo for me from now on. Im livin' clean from now on.

Or maybe i should just go back to the silver league where i can curbstomp everyone in the mid and late game

zerg is master race forever and always.

I told you early nexus is a bad idea. Protoss are usually the last to expand cause they survive on a single base for longer.

marksoccer wrote:

I told you early nexus is a bad idea. Protoss are usually the last to expand cause they survive on a single base for longer.

but i could fast expand against you and still win ^_^
so you can see why i wouldn't listen
ill go 10/10 nexus. because thats how few fuck's i'd give

Getting repeatedly curbstomped by pat, but still ignoring him. thats just embarrassing

Forge fast expand works against zerg pretty well, most zerg will expand early anyway and even if they dont youll have enough defense to survive if they attack early, and it can work against toss too, just make sure to scout, its much safer than nexus first
Its risky vs terran though


Also to help with early pressure (if you go forge fast expand or not) i recommend getting an attack upgrade from forge pretty early against zerg (0/0 lings die in 1 hit from zealots instead of 2 with 1/0/0), and a shield upgrade against terran (after warp gate tech of course, or at the same time if you have the gas)
That 1 upgrade will help immensely against early pressure
If you're against toss it doesnt matter which 1 you get first, attack or shield, but you should deff get 1 of them, they are both pretty much equally effective against toss (i like getting attack first to kill faster)
And if you intend to go mostly air then just get the shield upgrade instead of attack since that helps ground and air units
Dont bother getting armor upgrades (for ground or air) until later

pat1487 wrote:

and a shield upgrade against terran...an attack upgrade from forge pretty early against zerg...Dont bother getting armor upgrades (for ground or air) until later

This is very helpful. I've been getting the early upgrades, and i figured that there would be some differences against diff races, but i wasn't certain so i've just been purely getting the attack upgrades to start.

Pat1487 wrote:

Forge fast expand works against zerg pretty well, most zerg will expand early anyway and even if they dont youll have enough defense to survive if they attack early

zerg is currently my highest percentage win.
Both because im most comfortable with the early expand build, and i have the counters to their unit compositions figured out much more effectively than i do for other races (idk why).

after destroying two zerg players in a row though, i got super complacent and just went for a Phoenix cloud cus i had gotten it in response to muta's in the last game. then i was like "hollyshit thats mass roach hydra"
idk if i even had robo's yet.
----------
Funny story though.
i met my new buddeh zergben on the ladder. We went 1-1, in back to back matchups, before we started talking.
Then we decided to do some 2v2's (cuz, ya know, we supa pro)
we went 4-1 (w,w,w,L,w) but it odly placed us into silver, despite that we had beaten 2 gold-silver pairs (1 gold, 1 silver person per team) and our only loss was to a double platinum team.
Anyway, we thought we would have to beat 1 or 2 gold matchups before it would promote us, but the ladder was like "fuck you bitches" and matched us up to diamond and platinum teams for 3 games in a row.
we proceeded to cry and rage quit
Or at least i did.


Edit:

AmAz wrote:

zerg is master race--forever and always

not really directed at amaz, but is zerg less popular on ladder? because its been the matchup that i get the least, and the one i win at the most, like i mentioned.
(it really annoys me how much i get pvp matchups
i wish it would weight the odds against them occurring. so much flipping cheese)

People rarely play zerg in lower tiers because they require more apm to play well
Also toss has the most cheesing options so cheesers pick them
In plat/diamond you should see more zerg and less cheese (you will still see cheese though)

Also shield upgrades for immortals arent that effective, anything that does more then 10 damage to an immortal gets reduced to 10 damage with 0 shields or with 3 shields it doesnt make a difference, it does help against units that do less then 10 damage though, like t1 units (a rine with +3 deals 9 damage and level 3 shields on an immortal reduces it to 6)