the world's all about ach

Achilles.42 wrote:

Are there balance changes that weren't included in this vid? or are there just no balance changes for this patch

There are no balance changes this patch
Just the replay features and some editor features, like being able to publish your map to all of the regions
And tons of bug fixes
I didnt see anything about that global permissions bug or that bug where you get stuck on joining a game even though it shows you're in the lobby to everyone in the lobby


Also the points thing i was talking about is when you get promoted into a new league it uses the amount of bonus pool points you spent to determine your new position in the division of the league you were just promoted into
It is MMR that determines when you're promoted though, like you said
And the table i was thinking of doesnt even exist, im sure i saw it somewhere though, or at least i hope my brain isnt just making stuff up and telling me its real

Pat1487 wrote:

Also the points thing i was talking about is when you get promoted into a new league it uses the amount of bonus pool points you spent to determine your new position in the division of the league you were just promoted into
It is MMR that determines when you're promoted though, like you said
And the table i was thinking of doesnt even exist, im sure i saw it somewhere though, or at least i hope my brain isnt just making stuff up and telling me its real

woot.
The phantom graph was getting pretty close to convincing me, too.
Lucky thing i remembered to go and remove it from the Liquid thread.

i had missed the thing about 'how much bonus pool you use' determining to your initial rank, that makes sense though.

HOLY SHIT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRXMIRIq19A

nice. that looks really good.

The most one sided team game ever.
Im not gonna say my teammates were bad. i looked at their profiles and it wasn't much worse than mine, but still. they were pretty bad.

we got "rushed" at the 9:30 mark, which is really just a push, they were probably expanding. but this was the army graph.
im purple, my team is orange and yellow.
the attack hit right before my plot crashes, cuz i was in the back and last to get there


you can see yellow did a really good job of micro'ing, cuz he didn't lose any army units.

i have no idea what they were thinking though, because neither of them had even expanded (i was about to transfer probes when we got attacked), so i guess i should be glad we got a strong push that finished us off, and i didn't have to suffer through a late game that we'd probably inevitably have lost.

you shoulda shown their APM lol

Achilles.42 wrote:

The most one sided team game ever.
Im not gonna say my teammates were bad. i looked at their profiles and it wasn't much worse than mine, but still. they were pretty bad.

we got "rushed" at the 9:30 mark, which is really just a push, they were probably expanding. but this was the army graph.
im purple, my team is orange and yellow.
the attack hit right before my plot crashes, cuz i was in the back and last to get there


you can see yellow did a really good job of micro'ing, cuz he didn't lose any army units.

i have no idea what they were thinking though, because neither of them had even expanded (i was about to transfer probes when we got attacked), so i guess i should be glad we got a strong push that finished us off, and i didn't have to suffer through a late game that we'd probably inevitably have lost.

I looks like they are all on 1 base when the attack hit, the terran may have expanded, either that or he didnt know teal and blue where going for early aggression, or his macro was just bad
Teal probably expanded right before the attack, or as they were moving out, which is pretty late for zerg
It looks like blue 4gated

I have no idea what yellow and oj were doing
Orange had no macro, like he was making units but was really bad at it
And yellow looks like he was teching up to something, except since you said he didnt expand, idk what tech was planning to build on 1 base as toss

Eat_bacon_daily wrote:

HOLY SHIT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRXMIRIq19A

I played that map and it looks cooler then it is, its still pretty cool though

It tells you to play in offline mode, which i was too lazy to do, but in online mode theres a delay in your movement which gets annoying
Thats not really the maps fault though, what is the maps fault is the force field platform power up you get which doesnt always work

Your supposed to be able to make a platform you can stand on but most of the time you cant stand on it, i had to land in the exact center using the antigravity slow fall powerup to land gently in the middle because if i didnt do that i would just fall through the platform
And even if i did do that 70% of the time i would fall through it anyway

Eventually i came to a part where i had no idea where i was supposed to go (after you get the weapon that uses your life as ammo) i started back tracking looking for where i was supposed to go next and eventually got back to the part where you had to use the force field platform and just said "hell no im not doing that again" so i just stopped there

Also the story is written in broken english since english isnt the map makers first language, parts of the tutorial are still in chinese
I was reading it anyway because sometimes it had useful info, but the last story bit before i got lost was no help at all

so, for the record, i beat this guy:


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

On another note. THIS IS WHY I WASN'T DOING 1V1 LADDER: i got cannon rushed in my very first game (after my warm up unranked game, which was the above)

i stopped the cannon rush, then he cannon contained me, once i broke out, he had double stargate proxy on the way. i killed the stargates then mass recalled to base to ssave it.
then he tried to go mass void ray.
i evne freaked out cuz i lost my observer, and i was expecting him to switch to DT's

in teh end i won, but so freak'n stressful

so, while i was waiting for you pat.
sc2 decided to almost completely stop working.
after my second ffa game of making only tempests, i got back and everything is grayed out and whenever i hover my mouse over anything to play it, it says "upgrade your account to unlock this feature"
and im like "huh?"
it even did this for the AI 'ladder' which is supposed to be the thing that it lets you play if you're doing the hots starter version. or if you're on the sc2 temp keys, i think.
when i try to play a custom map it says "internal server error"
but it lets me play arcade games, which is even weider since there's no way it allows you to play any arcade unless you've got a real key, so it wasn't confused on that front for arcade.

restarting and logging off/on didn't do anything, and switching between the WoL and HoTS version didn't do anything either.

Eventually i tried switching regions, and was able to play on the korean server.
so i can still play, but not on the American server right now. it'll probably fix its self tomorrow, and if not, ill use google magic, but im too tired right now.

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

the one 1v1 game i played on the korean server was amusing though.
it was a pvp, and from the loading screen he looked like a nub, but its hard to tell, even if people have a border (which he didn't) how good people actually are.

anyway, i was expecting him to be really bad, but then i saw 3 warpgates and i was like "HE KNOWS HOW TO ZELOT RUSH. IM GONNA DIE TO KOREAN BLACK MAGIC WITHOUT HIM EVEN NEEDING TO PROXY THEM"

so i drop a forge down, and i chrono boost my zelot and stalker stalker up by the time his first zelot gets there, and hold everything off without difficulty till my cannon finishes.
since i was able to keep my scouting probe alive i was like "i guess ill just cannon rush him and not take chances"

so i do the super gosu cannon rush where you build it straight up in your mineral line, but you wall your probe off behind the min's with pylons, so you can build 1-2 cannons and they have to kill a pylon to get to your probe, which worked wonderfully.

i felt bad afterwords though, cuz it turns out he was just really bad, and only had 22 games.
probably not even all ladder games.
i've become what i hate most ;(

(because he's korean he had more apm than me, which wasn't surprising.
im assuming he was just spamming though, cuz he was playing much more slowly than me)

The korean server is tougher than ours, but there are still bad people there
Hopefully your sc2 is fixed for today, cause i will def be on tonight



I swear that the matchmaking/placement system is drunk

My first placement match was against a diamond, which i got the win for (but i didnt actually win, he wanted to win trade, i said sure if you go first thinking he was joking but then he actually left, i never saw him again so i never had to trade back, i have no idea how he is in diamond by doing that)

So my first placement was a win against diamond, then it puts me up against 3 bronze in a row
That makes no sense since i just beat a current diamond player but w/e, easy wins for me, then i go up against a silver player and lose cause of MM timing and failed early aggression (i thought i had it won cause i saw a hellion, but he only made 1 of them, i guess to trick me, he used the factory to make widow mines which raped me at his front)

So it places me in silver with a 4-1 record, 1 win vs diamond and 1 loss vs silver, (which you would think would counter balance to gold, maybe plat) im not counting the wins i got against the bronze cause i doubt those made any difference
Then my first match after getting into silver it puts me up against another current diamond, makes no damn sense
I won that diamond match (legit this time) and it gave me 48 points for it since i was apparently supposed to loose according to the "Opponent strongly favored" thing (i can show you the replay of it if you want ach, i had to deal with a soft contain and blink stalker micro/harass, i dont do anything particularly spectacular though, i just hard countered him)

My matches went diamond, bronze, silver, diamond
Wtf, i really wish i could see what my uncertainty curve looks like, it must be ridiculous, especially since i lose against silver but win against diamond

Yeah. i was able to play a game this morning, hopefully that'll still be true tonight.
ill be on a little later than usual--prolly around 11.

Yeah, the placement system makes 0 sense, after hearing that i want to finish my placement even less. because thats what happened last time, i went 4-1, lost to a bronze or silver player that was former diamond and it was like "welp. i guess its silver league time"

what was your strat for placement? 3gate robo?
cuz im planning just to straight 4gate the whole way through this time. im assuming that was my mistake before: not doing cheesy things. then go back to playing normally. or maybe try to 4gate my way to platinum

and thats almost the exact reason i ever lose to silver players.
oh looks. im on 2 base, got a good compisition going, we're keeping him on 2 base
oh, lets deny that expansion. quick, grab our own third expansion
feeling good.
dont forget upgrades
i see some MM coming through the midd--- DEAD
df;hlaksdflasfdagnklghlsdfa

and widow mines hurt you? you realize toss units have approximately infinity health. tsk tsk pat. tsk tsk.
Widow mines are the new reason i dont like playing terran or zerg in 1v1's though, because i do tend to lost my entire army to them as non-toss.

people seem to use widow mines muchmuch lass in team games for whatever reason

Achilles.42 wrote:

and widow mines hurt you? you realize toss units have approximately infinity health. tsk tsk pat. tsk tsk.
Widow mines are the new reason i dont like playing terran or zerg in 1v1's though, because i do tend to lost my entire army to them as non-toss.

Early on in the game they are really effective against toss cause your army isnt that large and they still 1 shot gateway units, if terran spreads them out leading up to his base and has like 5-7 of them they will wreck early game toss army

Have you gotten the widow mine drops yet? where they try to drop them out of vision so you dont notice and walk them in. or proxying a factory so they can lift it into your base and get them into your line even faster.

It happened in several of my first games ever. and every time i was like "OH GOD. HOW ARE MY WORKERS DYING. THIS ISN'T POSSIBL-- oh wait. widow mines exist now"

--------
EDIT:

so yeah, the placement system is complete bullshit. it doesn't care who you beat, it only cares who you lose to.
i beat a gold, silver, silver, and diamond for my placement (current diamond, he was also former masters 1v1) and got placed into bronze.
I somehow zoned out while i was playing the bronze player, which made me miss my timing window, and i also had horrible micro once i got there.
so, i got placed into bronze. because what does it matter if i can beat low diamond players if i lose to bronze player some times.

i then beat 2 noobies and a platinum, and it refused to promote me. so i was like "w/e"
at least for once i get to have a good win percentage for awhile : P 7-1 SO PRO. psych

i feel like it would have had to place me straight into platnum if i had just not lost to that last bronze player. which really sucks

like. why even give me a bronze player after beating gold and diamond people. that makes no fucking sense RRRAAAAAGGGGEEEEEE

Havent seen proxy factory or widow mine drops, ive only seen 2 terrans, 1 did that MM timing that i lost to, the other tried to contain me to 1 base very early in the game with 2 bunkers

In that game where i was contained, i didnt actually break the contain, i had kept my scouting probe alive outside my base and built a proxy pylon, blocked my ramp with 3 cannons, waited for warpgate to finish, and then 4gated his base, he tried to counter for a base trade with 8 units and was destroyed by my cannons and a stalker that survived the early marine attack without even killing 1 cannon or pylon

I dont think he wanted to contain me though cause he was basically trying to bunker rush me because he built 2 on the low ground and 1 on the high ground at my ramp and 1 next to my nexus (i didnt bother to block since he was terran so i didnt have buildings at the ramp), but i killed the scvs building the bunkers and killed his marines (i didnt see the 2 bunkers outside my base at first, he built them after my scouting probe went through, as my scouting probe was coming back to base i saw it before the probe ran into range of them and i guess he didnt notice i had a probe outside)

I dont block terrans either
But the other thing they do thats annoying is build a rax inside your base, or outside and then lift it in, and then build a bunker by it. so i have to remember to scout around my own base until i have units.

and remember how easy 3v3's were for us?
i hatechu
i lost 5 in a row, mostly from early pressure.

Achilles.42 wrote:

and remember how easy 3v3's were for us?
i hatechu
i lost 5 in a row, mostly from early pressure.

Its cause i wasnt there to carry the team

I kinda wish they displayed peoples records along with what league they are in the loading screen.

i went against a 'silver' player that was former platnum. idk how he was silver though, cuz his record for this season was 31-2, and since i beat him then he was 31-1 when i played him.

I dont know, maybe thats just a silly idea, but i feel like it might be nice. cuz if someone has a 50/50 win rate you know they're stable in whatever league they are, and probably belong there, but if there's a discrepency then you know they might play at a level above what they're border suggests.

Yeah, displaying a persons win percentage would be nice, if its higher then normal, just so you know what your up against

Also he is in silver with a record like that because he went 4-1 and placed into silver during the last week of the season
You cant be promoted during the last week of a season because they lock it for some reason

Man, he should have brought us wit him.
He did not have lock on the pro wc3 mazer team

Suck it Pat.


<3

If i kept playing 1v1 i could prob get back into plat

And 'if then' statement isn't worth anything all by its self

i started workin' on my 1v1's again. sadly im only barely above 50% win rate.
I think i just got unlucky with the amount of cheese i faced.
Cuz except for 1, thats what all of my losses were from.

One of the toss cheesers dt rushed me. which i would have been prepared for, but he did a really good job denying scouting. and my macro slipped while i was figuring out what i needed to emphasize, so even though i had an oracle for detection, i didn't have enough units to kill off his army with dt's (was very embarrassing).
But it taught me that positioning stalkers to deny any scouting can be very frustrating for the other guy, so i've started doing that whenever i can. Especially if i decide to throw down a nexus fairly early, i get the stalker so they have trouble spotting my expo for awhile.

But i then i got matched with him in my next game.
I figured he'd just go for dt's or some other early play, so i 3gate robo'd him.
He didn't go for dt's, but i saw him going for a 4gate so i knew star tech wasn't gonna be a worry for awhile.
His push was ready before mine, but luckily Immortals > 4gate, and the rest of the game was easy.

My most frustrating loss was from an 8pool though.
Poorly because the second the game started the guy started trying to distract me with jokes. and i was functionally certain he was going to early pool me.
But the map was (maybe frost?) and you have to position your first pylon perfectly, otherwise there wont be propper space to block with a gateway and cybo core, so when i saw the lings coming i realized i couldn't drop my cybo core in a useful spot, so my pylon was exposed and he just killed it and i lost even though i kept trying to spawn zelots. Then he even managed to take out my cybo core before i had the gas for a core.
But, oh welllll. ill just pay attention to pylon placement next time.
----

I also started playing on the europe server to work on my zerg (cuz it functionally is the same as having 2 accounts). Cuz my MMR for unranked and ranked are about equally high, and its too frustrating to try and get better with an off race like that.

So.
Funny story. i was looking at my ladder stats, and i have a 75% win rate vs toss and terran, but a 25% rate against zerg : /

Unasked for game analysis:

Achilles.42 wrote:

I was having a lot of luck in a series of unranked games vs erg spotting when they wanted to go macro and delaying their expo's with pylons and cannons (cannon rushing ftw)
And then following up with pheonix harass > voidray > collosus > archon deathball.

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
It will only work in 2 circumstances
1. If they go to expand there pretty late (like after you already have a third or whichever expansion you denied them)
2. If they focus on getting rid of it and expanding there for too long (or if it pulls their army out of position for you)
If they spot it early after you did it they can just attack and should be able to win unless you expanded much earlier then when you did that
But even then, if you expanded that much earlier then them you would probably win without the cannon deny (and probably couldve won if you just attacked instead of cannon denying)

Achilles.42 wrote:

But when i went to play a ranked series i managed to lose 6 of 7 zerg games. Partly i think because i started skipping collosus and going straight to zelot archon, and zelot archon didn't seem strong enough vs roach hydra. Even though i had 3/3 and he was on 2/2 i ended up falling apart to his constant remaxing. The game that i won was when i went back to colossus before archon.

You cant just keep trading armies vs zerg, it actually helps them since they free up supply to tech switch into something else if they want (if they prepare the switch before the major battle), so even if they lose the major battle they can remax on units that will win against whatever they lost to in the first battle
You have to trade cost effectively vs zerg since they should be able to outproduce you, 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

Achilles.42 wrote:

Terran seems really easy for me. Its easy to scout if their doing an early expand, 3 base drops/pressure, or some sort of funky 1 base or proxy.

You cant scout early expand, or you shouldnt be able to since they will build the cc in their base behind the wall (unless its a super early expand, or if they are dumb and build it outside)

Achilles.42 wrote:

a lot of terrans go for those constant drops off of 3 base, which are fairly effective, but with a little multi tasking and splitting up your army it seems it can be very easy to hold off. and once you get a maxed army there seems like there's nothing the terran can do to stop you.

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

Achilles.42 wrote:

A few people seem to try and macro and go for late game mech, but there doesn't seem to be any composition thats any good vs toss in the late game, and those are always really easy wins.

If you can survive long enough, or if the terran plays passively then yeah youll end up winning, a full toss army vs a full terran army, toss should win by a little, then it comes down to who can produce reinforcements faster, if the terran managed to kill off the non gateway units then they might have a chance to reinforce quickly enough (since barracks units beat gateway units and stargate/robo units are fairly slow to build)

Achilles.42 wrote:

The only thing that trips me up is proxy factory widow mines in my base (build factory outside and lift it in), or proxy barracks / bunker rush. But those are actually really easy to spot if you scout after you start your gateway and check the perimeter   outside your bases cliff.

If you get proxy bunker use your scouting probe to make a pylon outside your base, deny them access to the high ground in your base to make sure they dont get a bunker in your base, hold off the marines long enough to get warpgate and 4gate, warp in outside your base to kill off his scvs (his base should be fairly unprotected, probably 3 supply depots blocking the ramp, 4 stalkers should kill it off faster then he can pull back, run up and start killing scvs focus them, while this is happening take w/e is in your base down your ramp and kill bunker(s) and kill barracks if he proxied that too), then just keep warping in till hes dead, have the units from your base meet up with the rest of your stuff once they clean up the outside of your base, should be an easy win

As for widow mine proxy, your probably screwed if you let the factory get into your base, you should have robo by the time it hits so you might be able to save it but if it catches you by complete surprise youll lose many of the probes in your main so youll probably lose even if you do manage to clean the proxy up (if you dont have robo or stargate (for oracle) then you are incredibly screwed), you can make a cannon to detect it, but thats not ideal since thats a lot of lost mining time waiting for the cannon to finish
Maybe make a pylon in a dark corner of your base if you scout something that tells you they are proxying, have a couple zealot patrol around too, only way to stop that is to make sure it cant start really

Achilles.42 wrote:

1 base and 2 base all ins are hard to hold off, but they seem fairly uncommon for whatever reason.

Every 1v1 pvt game ive played in hots the terran does this (except in the placement matches where proxy bunker was the main thing)
I dont know how you rarely see it, its the most effective way to beat toss since terran is stronger in the mid game
When i lose to terran, this is why

Achilles.42 wrote:

most of the games that i've lost are from those. 1 guy that committed to proxy barracks/bunker (and i crushed cuz i spotted it) i got matched up with again, and i figured he would either proxy me again or 1 base all in, cuz it didn't look like he was expanding, so i did my 1 gate 1 robo expand (starting the immortal and core before expanding) But evne though that was really good for early pressure, he had snuck in his second base faster than me, so all those units were waisted, then he pulled scvs with his army and just steam rolled over me. I had 1 collosus with thermal lance 3/4 done when he hit, and i just couldn't micro well enough
But even then, if i do get a good macro build, if i move for a third when their 2 base all in'ing then a lot of times its suicide for me, cuz i just dont have enough to hold anything.

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

Achilles.42 wrote:

Im surprised my toss win rate is so high, cuz those games always feel so stressful and so unpredictable.
With terran and zerg, theres like 1 or 2 things i look for and i know what they're doing 90% of the time, but with pvp it feels like there's 50 things im looking for, and still only sorta know what they're doing until we get on 3 base and are macro'ing.
Like, i saw one guy drop a stargate and a TC, and i thought "voidrays with blink stalker support? i guess that makes sense. maybe it counters a regular 2 stargate build. Definitely wont be any DT's if he's making a stargaze" But what i actually got hit by was oracles and DT harass. i held it off without taking much damage and managed to kill him, but it was close.
Then another guy FFE and followed up with dt's. if i hadn't decided to one base 3gate robo and kill him, i might not have had enough detection with a macro play. especially with 2 bases to watch.
i also keep bouncing between one basing and macro'ing, cus 4 gate and 3gate robo are so strong vs any sort of early expand, and a lot of times if i wait before i manage to scout that they aren't 1 basing i put myself into a too disadvantaged position to macro. But when i do get on 2+ base and macro, it seems like lots of voidrays are just an easy win for me, pheonix's can counter and pick them off, but its really easy to just start chrono'ing them out in return long before they've done enough damage.
And then 2 base all ins are almost as deadly as 1 base's, so its hard to know if its safe to go for a third.
And thats not even counting all the cannon rushers, dt rushes, and stargate proxies, which a lot of proposes do. Whereas with zerg and terran they're just small slivers of the player pool.

You can pretty much just go voidray/zealot/archon with a few oracles in every pvp and will have what you need to win if you out macro or out harass your enemy
The only problem is the early game where people might dt rush, proxy, or 4gate
Stargate proxy is pretty easy to deal with, with stalkers, just run away when alignment is activated (micro the ones being attacked and have them run away, let the rest of the stalkers attack, you should have at least 3) and when they start attacking something else go back in again, keep doing that until alignment ends then just attack normally, they will probably only have 2 rays at this point so you should be able to win with 3 stalkers and perfect micro (add more stalkers so that your micro doesnt have to be perfect), if they waited for 4 rays then it might be a problem since they can focus fire a stalker down in like 2 seconds, but if they waited that long you should have at least 1 of your own rays up by then and a decent amount of stalkers (if they went oracle at the start instead of ray then its even easier to deal with)
4gate requires a mothership core (for overcharge) and cannons if you expanded, you need to scout it or you probably will lose, if your on 1 base you might be able to hold on if you have immortal either out or soon to be out, 4gate should hit at like 7mins so you should have an immortal out soon after that if you scouted the 4gate
1 base 3gaterobo should be easy if you expanded and have a stargate, use overcharge and void/zealot to kill everything, if they kite zealot with stalker then just stay in range of overcharge if they wait for overcharge to run out throw down come cannons when you see them back off
Dt rush is annoying, but oracle can deal with it if it has the energy to reveal and use laser, 2 oracles would be enough to deal with all dts