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

Alex74 said:
You done much of the campaign yet? If not, your next challenge is completing the protoss missions on brutal ;)
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That last protoss mission on brutal is insane, no matter what units I made I just end up getting owned by those hybrid things once you get over 1000 kills...
 
Really struggling with TvT and TvZ at the moment, anyone got some general tips for these matchups?

I find I'm not too bad TvP simply because I understand the matchup so well from being on the receiving end, but I just fail so often to react in the other two matchups.

Finding vs Zerg, opening blue flame hellion / mostly marines with 1-2 maurauders is not too bad, as long as I transition to thors very quickly to stop the inevitable muta harass. But if I do anything other than that, i.e. heavy marine or marine/tank, I just get crushed by either bane/speedling or mutas pinging back and forth between expos.

Vs Terran, I just basically get marine tank viking but my timings must be off or something because I always seem behind. And occasionally they'll do something stupid to mess me up like banshees or hellion drops.

A lot of my problems are basically down to experience, and unfamiliarity with the builds and units. As protoss everything feels natural but with Terran I have to stop and think way too much and then die :-)

Anyway it's very fun though having to learn the game again effectively, from the ground up.
 
MikeHunt79 said:
That last protoss mission on brutal is insane, no matter what units I made I just end up getting owned by those hybrid things once you get over 1000 kills...
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Right from the start, build 3 gateways and a dark obelisk. Train dark templars for the first 4 or 5 attacks, until the void rays appear. Keep all your forces as one group, and move them to the entrance that's being attacked. The dark templars are great at blocking off entrances, and make short work of hybrids.

Once the void rays appear, switch to building them 100%. 5 stargates should be plenty. Same tactics apply - move as one group, stay close to the archive building, and move to the entrance being attacked.

Once the carriers appear, switch to massed carriers. Eventually, after the second nydus worm attack, you will probably be overrun, so fall back to the higher ground. Once the mothership arrives (at around 2000 kills IIRC), and enemy forces have broken through your defences, pull all your forces back to the left of the map (near your nexuses). As long as you have at least one building still standing, the zerg will keep throwing zerglings and other ground forces at you, which will be easier to kill than massed air units and hydralisks. So, keep the last few buildings cloaked and you will be okay - just make sure you kill any overseers as soon as they come in range of your fleet.

Doing the above, it's pretty easy to get to ~3250 kills (the "2500+750" achievment), but once you pass around 3200 masses of corruptors, mutalisks and hydras are sent, and nothing will stop them for very long.


Once final thing: You will have a lot more minerals than vespene, especially if you build a few extra drones at the start, so place lots of cannons. Placing them in rings around the archive building seems to work well. And doing some shield and air weapons research early on will help things.
 
kar said:
Really struggling with TvT and TvZ at the moment, anyone got some general tips for these matchups?

I find I'm not too bad TvP simply because I understand the matchup so well from being on the receiving end, but I just fail so often to react in the other two matchups.

Finding vs Zerg, opening blue flame hellion / mostly marines with 1-2 maurauders is not too bad, as long as I transition to thors very quickly to stop the inevitable muta harass. But if I do anything other than that, i.e. heavy marine or marine/tank, I just get crushed by either bane/speedling or mutas pinging back and forth between expos.

Vs Terran, I just basically get marine tank viking but my timings must be off or something because I always seem behind. And occasionally they'll do something stupid to mess me up like banshees or hellion drops.

A lot of my problems are basically down to experience, and unfamiliarity with the builds and units. As protoss everything feels natural but with Terran I have to stop and think way too much and then die :-)

Anyway it's very fun though having to learn the game again effectively, from the ground up.
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I would say the best way at the moment to do TvZ is to open 2 rax, expand then go into blue flame hellion harrass. Then just chill and get a army of tank/marine and thors.
 
nex20 said:
I would say the best way at the moment to do TvZ is to open 2 rax, expand then go into blue flame hellion harrass. Then just chill and get a army of tank/marine and thors.
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agree with this. i was having real trouble with TvZ until i started 2 rax expand - even if its just an OC in my main to start with if playing safe.

i cant micro well enough to use marines that much...even more so now with the infestor buff - I dont think i had seen one in 50 odd games vs Zerg but they are allover the place now and fungal can end the game if your marines get caught off gaurd.
 
TvT its worth opening something other than straight up tank/viking which is what the mid/end game ends with pretty much always. Choose from one of cloaked banshee, bf hellion drop or a v early expo (after 1 or 2 rax). Then see what damage you can do before transitioning into tank/viking to hopefully give you an early lead.

That said, if you're below plat/diamond, probably all you need is better macro. Then you have more stuff and win regardless of opening!
 
nex20 said:
I would say the best way at the moment to do TvZ is to open 2 rax, expand then go into blue flame hellion harrass. Then just chill and get a army of tank/marine and thors.
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if your quick enough fast gas x2 and 2 cloaked Vikings to attack/harass the drones on the mineral line can work wonders.

If you take out 10/12/14 drones early doors and even happen to lose the vikings at the same time, it gives you enough of a mineral lead to push quickly with ground forces (marines/tanks etc) to win usually.

T v T - personally it's all about fast macro marines and tanks. I usually open with 2 x rax, gas, orbital command, factory and 2/3 tanks. Make sure you get sheilds for marines and if possible upgrade attack by one as well.

Dependant on map I may go with tank/marine drop from medivacs as well. Works on the larger maps where the rush distance is a long way.

Edit - had to laugh - did my 1 game placement for season 2 last night - T v T - he piled into my base early with mass marine, ended up having to use SCV's to kill the marines off, Just managed to hold him off and I've no idea what he did next, allowed me to get back into it with marines/medivacs/tanks etc and push to his base and won. I was pleased that i didn;t panic when getting attacked and used my scv's as a shield to allow the 2 marines I had left to kill off his 5 marines!

Still ended up in Bronze! Despite being 1800 bronze, 1st place for ages at the end of season 1!!
 
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I was tempted to reply Frank, that actually 'my macro is very good thank you very much', but I watched a few replays and compared to my protoss play my macro is pretty horrible.

I found my hotkey setup just wasn't optimal for Terran and getting used to the different style was slowing me down and I was not using my OC energy as efficiently as I use CB.

I followed both yours and nex's advice. Against Zerg I'm finding it much better now as I was one baseing a bit too long it seems and bio isn't so great against Zerg. The 2 rax opening with an early expo into mass mech pretty much owns zerg. With this approach my superior APM and general macro is letting me roll the gold/platinum zergs I'm facing now. As a protoss player, it's very very satisfying to see a hoarde of mutas knowing you have a couple thors out and stim marines. It's a feeling of invulnerability you just don't get as Protoss.

Still struggling against Terrans and higher skilled (high plat/low diamond) Protoss players but most of this seems to be down to unit control and that my macro/apm isn't yet at diamond level with Terran.

Another thing, I never really rated the thor as a unit that much when I played against Terrans, but I'm surprised how effective they can be. Against 4 gating protosses, you can just sit there let them waste their unit advantage at your wall then push out with marauder, marine, thor, medivac and they usually only have 1-2 colossi out. With the thors at the front bearing the brunt of the damage the bio support can make short work of the gateway meat shield. Unprotected colossi don't last very long.

Really enjoying the new perspective on the game at the moment. And it feels nice to have a few different early game options.
 
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kar said:
I was tempted to reply Frank, that actually 'my macro is very good thank you very much', but I watched a few replays and compared to my protoss play my macro is pretty horrible.
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I've played over 1000 games as terran over the months, and I still don't think my macro is "good" ! Game last night TvZ I was sitting pretty taking my 4th base (I thought) food was about equal and I was in a solid defensive position pushing towards Z slowly leapfrogging with tanks. He charged in and just about won the engagement, and because I had sat watching the fight for too long and been focusing on my micro by the time I jumped back to my base to prepare for the counter my minerals had spiked to 4000 (I had a fully saturated gold) and realised I had no where near enough unit producing structures. He was able to push me back with the units he had left and then reinforce faster than I could and it was gg soon after.

To simplify, I reckon bronze/silver can cope with 1 base macro, gold/plat probably 2 base, and then diamond/masters you need to be able to macro off 3 bases properly. V few players can do this efficiently if they're genuinely honest with themselves like you are!

Sorry for the long post, slow day at work :)
 
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kar said:
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Yea, definitely agree with nex20's advice there. My 'standard' opening vs zerg with terran is 2 rax pressuring with 5 marines (scv or two as well), immediate CC, then double gas for blue-flame hellions -> tanks. Then thors come later ~10-11 minutes once mutas become a significant threat. Still havent beat nex20 with it yet though :p (*shakes fist*)..

One thing i'm still finding tough to get used to is adding unit producing structures. I've found (and i'm sure you have the same with protoss) that it's pretty easy to know when you havent got enough gateways (for example) and can just add on the right amount. Personally, I still need to develop that sense with terran.

You likely to be online much this week? :)
 
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Alex74 said:
Yea, definitely agree with nex20's advice there. My 'standard' opening vs zerg with terran is 2 rax pressuring with 5 marines (scv or two as well), immediate CC, then double gas for blue-flame hellions -> tanks. Then thors come later ~10-11 minutes once mutas become a significant threat. Still havent beat nex20 with it yet though :p (*shakes fist*)..

One thing i'm still finding tough to get used to is adding unit producing structures. I've found (and i'm sure you have the same with protoss) that it's pretty easy to know when you havent got enough gateways (for example) and can just add on the right amount. Personally, I still need to develop that sense with terran.

You likely to be online much this week? :)
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Not so much at the start of the week, hopefully thurs/fri and the weekend :-)

I completely agree about unit structures but also tech / research structures.

I kind of followed the protoss approach, building just the one factory (as if it was a robo bay). That lost me a lot of games. Now I tend to get 4-5 factories up (3 bases) and about 8 to 10 raxes. Need to work more on the starport units since I tend to forget about them once i get in to a hectic macro fight off of 3-4 bases and 30-45 min games.

I notice as Terran it's very rare to have a game lasting less than 20 minutes :)
 
kar said:
Not so much at the start of the week, hopefully thurs/fri and the weekend :-)

I completely agree about unit structures but also tech / research structures.

I kind of followed the protoss approach, building just the one factory (as if it was a robo bay). That lost me a lot of games. Now I tend to get 4-5 factories up (3 bases) and about 8 to 10 raxes. Need to work more on the starport units since I tend to forget about them once i get in to a hectic macro fight off of 3-4 bases and 30-45 min games.

I notice as Terran it's very rare to have a game lasting less than 20 minutes :)
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If you go mech (on two bases) get 3 facts up (2 with tech labs, 1 with reactor) and pump hellion/thor/tank. and just make marines from the naked rax. That's what I used to do and its pretty strong. Easy to defend v muta's too.

If you wanna practice v Zerg hit me up.
 
nex20 said:
I would say the best way at the moment to do TvZ is to open 2 rax, expand then go into blue flame hellion harrass. Then just chill and get a army of tank/marine and thors.
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???

I'm a Zerg player and this sounds like Helion suicide to me. Helions could have kryptonite flames and they'd still get owned as soon as they roll onto creep.
 
I'm on regular guys so add me in: welshdragon.729 I'm a silver rank terran player. WOuldn't mind some rgeular teamings for 4v4 as I find myself constantly up against diamond with people just starting out on my team!
 
Ok, I've tried all the challenges for each race on basic, and golded each one. I actually fell in love with zerg.

I'm also aware that zerg is damn hard to play allegedly. What's a good way to learn the basics of macro and micro etc for zerg?
 
I was thinking, would it be worth having all out names on a list somewhere instead of scattered throughout this thread? I'm sure I've got a some of the people added to my list but it would be nice to have everyone added if possible.

Shall I whip up a spreadsheet on google docs so we can all add our names to it, along with our preferred race and league?
 
OMG I stink at this game :o Never played the first SC and have just played Supreme Commander/FA to death the past few years.

Can anybody give me some basic pointers? With Terran I get slaughtered by the AI on easy. I pump out a few units as fast I can, but the first enemy attack kills them easily and then it's game over within 5 mins :(

I seem to have had most success with Zerg - I actually manage to inflict some damage with them. Terran just seem so weak and I get absolutely destroyed in no time. What am I doing wrong? :confused:

I don't even know where to start with Protos - LOL :o
 
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