**** Original Starcraft 2 Thread ****

kar said:
It's surprising how many mass roach builds there are right now. Playing some 2v2s, I found I had to go triple robo immortal off of two bases, as even with blink the stalkers couldn't stand up to it.

It's like being back in the beta.
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I've had to adjust my 1v1 PvZ to deal with a 6 minute roach push on smaller distance maps. Have been experimenting with throwing down a robo as soon as i scout the roach warren (ends up theoretically being 1 gate, robo, gateway, and fits with the scout timing quite nicely). Sentries hold the ramp until immortals start coming out. Feels so stupid when roaches break the front and 20 lings run in, so I dont see much in the way of other options except holding the front until i have 4 warp gates :(

Stalkers just dont feel like a strong enough 'counter' to roaches any more, but once the immortals are out then immortal, zealot with a couple stalkers and sentries seems to work well against early zerg. Once the spire's up, 2-3 warp gates worth of stalkers should deal with the first few mutas well enough.

Not sure it's entirely stable, but it's the best i've been able to come up with so far :(
 
I like the sound of that indie. Going to try that in my next TvZ.

Last night I played against a zerg player who is rank 11 in the diamond league. Obviously I lost but it was actually a really good game. He opened with a hard roach push. Luckily I blocked the entrance with a bunker + silos so just repaired to hold that off. He did eventually bust through but I had a thor, MM and tanks up by then so pushed him back. Couple minutes later he nydus worms my base with mass roach. Should have seen it coming and it done me over. I really should have got some banshees and vikings up. Banshees to own the roaches and vikings to overlord hunt.
 
HummuH1 said:
Interested to get some feedback from Zerg and Protoss players.

Since the patch, I'm finding early (sub 8 mins) Terran harrassment much harder and if it fails, an easy roll over for the opponent. My usual staples are a quick 8 marine medi drop on mineral line (which is a bit of an all in move) or early MM push. Neither seem to have been as effective post patch, although I'm not too sure why.

So, P & Z players, what early push / harassment do you find most crippling when playing against Terran? Any particular strats that you feel you are particularly vunerable too at the moment?

Cheers.
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8 marine drop doesnt have to be all in, you dont have to 'rush' for it by cutting workers, and in theory you shouldnt have to lose all of your 8 marines. Go in, kill probes, pick up and run like hell. Medivacs are a bit slower so you'd have to pick up a bit earlier, but should still work out ok and do some damage, throwing them off their game a bit.

Not had much in the way of 'crippling' early game harassment as Protoss recently. But, v early marauders with concussive shell/stim are just about the most infuriating thing in existence. On the other hand, with decent micro a toss can hold reasonably well and once a couple sentries are out they should be fine.

If a protoss player doesnt get detection then banshee play can be crippling. Similarly, a well placed drop on the mineral line will generally work well.

For me in particular, I have trouble with MM balls. I hate teching higher than twilight council/robo facility (T2?) on one base, the only matchup where i'll commonly go higher is PvP where colossi are almost mandatory. Once I have an expansion and 4 assimilators worth of gas coming in, I'll tech straight to High Templar and feel very safe against MM. There is a timing window there though which makes me very vulnerable to MM before Psi Storm comes out.

Other protoss players arent so stingy with tech investment though, so be ready to skew more towards marauders +/ throw out a couple vikings if you see a robo bay.


Now that i think about it, there was one game where i was roflstomped by a Terran who just got marines. Obviously assumed that would force me into colossi, so they added a few vikings and a couple medivacs. Instead, I went heavy stalker with sentries (hate teching too far off one base!!). I think my loss was partly down to a forcefield mismicro tbh..

Bit of a braindump there, hope some of it's useful info. I still owe you a game sometime :p
 
Alex74 said:
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Cheers man, it is indeed useful.

What I meant about the marine drop being all in is that it's generally an unscouted drop (to get it done quick enough - SCV's generally can't get to the back of the base by that stage either). So if you drop in against someone who has planned to turtle from the outset, your medi and marines can get zapped before they've hit, if there's mineral line defense.

In that scenario, you're left with a handful of marines and not much else at your base.

You can always drop off the mineral line but you can easily lose the surprise element of it.
 
HummuH1 said:
Cheers man, it is indeed useful.

What I meant about the marine drop being all in is that it's generally an unscouted drop (to get it done quick enough - SCV's generally can't get to the back of the base by that stage either). So if you drop in against someone who has planned to turtle from the outset, your medi and marines can get zapped before they've hit, if there's mineral line defense.

In that scenario, you're left with a handful of marines and not much else at your base.

You can always drop off the mineral line but you can easily lose the surprise element of it.
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Well in the early game I'd rely on macro to outplay a Protoss opponent. Find the timing windows to attack and do the most damage. Drops come in when you're scouting your opponent and you see windows. If they're defending 2-3 bases and you see a gap in the defence, or they've moved their army out of their main, you can do a drop to pull them back and do some damage.

Ultimately you need a decent core army to take on a protoss player, so that should be your main priority. Drops come in later as a tactic to throw off your opponent and displace their army (if you're lucky they'll 1a and send their entire ground army to hold off your 1/2 medivac drop).
 
Alex74 said:
Well in the early game I'd rely on macro to outplay a Protoss opponent. Find the timing windows to attack and do the most damage. Drops come in when you're scouting your opponent and you see windows. If they're defending 2-3 bases and you see a gap in the defence, or they've moved their army out of their main, you can do a drop to pull them back and do some damage.

Ultimately you need a decent core army to take on a protoss player, so that should be your main priority. Drops come in later as a tactic to throw off your opponent and displace their army (if you're lucky they'll 1a and send their entire ground army to hold off your 1/2 medivac drop).
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Cheers. I'm keen to finish off that game we started now you've told me how to beat you! Gives me a chance...
 
Early harass from Terran has certainly been reduced by the recent patches.

As protoss you can now safely 13 gate and really pump chrono on econ without rushing out a stalker quite so quickly.

It also makes 15 nexus builds pretty viable, or a 1 gate, core fe. This makes it a lot easier to reach the midgame roughly equal with Terran.

I think as Terran, now that one base pressure isn't quite the panache it was, it's worth playing more sc1 like, and going for a macro game. The drop ship is still pretty awesome and you can combine some marauder pressure to keep them on two bases while dropping in two spots at once while you secure a 3rd.

Facing a 3 basing Terran while on two bases yourself, is damn hard.

Slowly but surely this game is becoming more macro oriented and less you die now. A couple more patches and this will be a pretty damn awesome game.
 
Alex74 said:
Not had much in the way of 'crippling' early game harassment as Protoss recently. But, v early marauders with concussive shell/stim are just about the most infuriating thing in existence. On the other hand, with decent micro a toss can hold reasonably well and once a couple sentries are out they should be fine.

If a protoss player doesnt get detection then banshee play can be crippling. Similarly, a well placed drop on the mineral line will generally work well.
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I've had a lot of success recently with fast Mauraders and a few Marines against Protoss, so much so that its almost my complete mindset early on to get some troops into their base within 5 minutes.

I never got anywhere before, and I think now I've learnt to early harass, albeit not wonderfully, I win more convincingly. If I get it right, I'm backing up the initial run with more troops of course, and its game over.

This also transitions nicely into Banshees if I've got my economy running properly, as I'm not (yet) spending on Siege tech/tanks, though if a game is running on I of course get this asap.

Banshees/Hellions sounds interesting, any one got any links to read up on it? I love Hellion harassing zerg mineral lines, even against Gold players it yields really good success.

And finally, is there anything that can stop a good number (say 8 or so) of tier3 battleships? Against Terran especially my greatest success is continual harassment and turtling until I have researched t3 weapons and armour, all the while building BS of course, and then even with only a reasonable ground force I usually don't lose (unless of course he's teched to BS and then its down to numbers).

kar said:
Early harass from Terran has certainly been reduced by the recent patches.
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Really? I've had more success since the patch than before - maybe only because my micro/macro is improving but still.
 
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HummuH1 said:
Cheers Indie. Banshee's and Hellions are units I've never formed a strat round, rather used them as support mid-game, probably when they've lost most of their effectiveness. Guess the micro intensity of them probably put me off them.

Cheers, I have something new to try!

EDIT: thinking about it, that might leave you open to 6 pool rush.
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no worries, It's quite a solid strategy and leaves Zerg having to multi-task very heavily in order to fend off that kind of harassment.. then obviously you just go for MM Tank, as Zerg won't be able to afford any mutalisks.

sniffy said:
I like the sound of that indie. Going to try that in my next TvZ.

Last night I played against a zerg player who is rank 11 in the diamond league. Obviously I lost but it was actually a really good game. He opened with a hard roach push. Luckily I blocked the entrance with a bunker + silos so just repaired to hold that off. He did eventually bust through but I had a thor, MM and tanks up by then so pushed him back. Couple minutes later he nydus worms my base with mass roach. Should have seen it coming and it done me over. I really should have got some banshees and vikings up. Banshees to own the roaches and vikings to overlord hunt.
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I must admit, the use of Roaches has gone up, but its a good thing, for a T1.5 unit they were hardly used by many players, i think it gives Zerg that extra bit of ommphf that they needed.

an extra strategy to use if anything. better than constantly going mutalisk every game.

Vikings are underused imho. just 1-2 pumped out isnt a great deal of cash, but can really pose a huge threat to Zerg, as we have to keep tight locks on our supply, too many ovies = no minerals.. to little, or dead ones = no units :D

also forces the Zerg to produce something to counter the vikings.
 
platypus said:
..And finally, is there anything that can stop a good number (say 8 or so) of tier3 battleships?..
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Well, as protoss my strategy would be not to let you get so many BCs in the first place. But if it came down to it, I would feedback the hell out of them with High Templar, then have a Stalker/Sentry (for guardian shield to reduce that huge DPS) Army with some newly morphed Archons. That, and a whole lot of prayer :p

Rarely come up against BCs though unless it's a last ditch strategy, so there are only a few out. Stalker/Sentry + HT work beautifully in these cases.

On the other hand if you're talking 8 BCs, then I can just say that I'd get the same but with a mothership for vortex and cloak, and a few upgraded carriers while I'm at it :p Honestly depends on my tech path at the time.

Suppose as terran you'd have as many vikings as possible and again, prayer to the SC2 gods :p

As zerg...goodness knows..corruptors? High HP units with Corruption spell + maybe some hydras if there are excess minerals should make some dents in heavy BC.


EDIT:
kar said:
Early harass from Terran has certainly been reduced by the recent patches...
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At least they cant just drop 4 marauders, stim and kill a nexus any more :p, still see a lot of early pressure though from terran though :(
 
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i've officially switched to random now =)

It's awesome for me personally because sometimes I spawn as zerg and have a lot of fun with map control and trying to play like FruitDealer, sometimes as Terran and I can just sit back and win off 2-3 base, and sometimes as protoss and have that reliable stability.

Only downside is having to learn 9+ builds =(
 
mother of god blizzcon is going to be absolutely unbelievable.

$45k worth of prizes featuring these players:

Loner - China
Luffy - China
mTwDeMuslim - Europe
TLO - Europe
NEXGenius - Korea
MakaPrime - Korea
Fenix - Latin America
Capoch - Latin America
Huk - North America
SeleCT - North America
mTwDIMAGA - Russia
White-Ra - Russia
Ice - SE Asia
RedArchon - SE Asia
Sen - Taiwan
SoftBall - Taiwan

To make it even better: casted by Dustin Browder, Day9, Tasteless and Artosis

To make it EVEN BETTER: BOXER VS FRUITDEALER SHOWMATCH HOLY ****************

:p
 
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^OMG :eek::D Almost makes me wanna buy one of those online-ticket thingies.

Man, each and every one of those matches+commentary better be recorded and uploaded. Streaming won't be enough, no doubt will have to have those stored for watching loads of times :)
 
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