anyone able to watch the MLG stream?

10/15/2010 5:13:21 PM

http://www.justin.tv/imoogle/b/271901121

Check his highlights.

10/15/2010 5:15:02 PM

Watching some of the MLG now.

Pretty entertaining stuff. A lot of really good players. From like RO8 on will be all really great match-ups, and now the round they are in are featuring really solid match-ups already.

10/15/2010 10:15:58 PM

watched a the huk&cella 2v2s. apparently the way you're supposed to play 2v2s with PZ is to get early banglings and a couple zealots and stalkers and just push early, blow up the enemy zerg's drones, and then they gg because it's huk and cella.

10/17/2010 2:17:34 PM

i like where your head's at, dzags. i'm going to try that build later.

10/17/2010 8:03:28 PM

idra wins the MLG.. won it pretty easily too, but was pretty expected. Funny thing is he doesn't even use roaches, pretty much all ling/muta play. However, you could tell that right now terran has no way to slow up zerg early expand with reaper play like before patch. He was able to early expand and just deal with some helions and then win with mutas in almost every game.

Only saw his games vs. terran, didn't see any vs. toss so wasn't sure what he was doing vs. toss.

10/17/2010 9:48:45 PM

Just played against a terran who fast expanded with a planetary fortress. He then turtled up hard with tanks while expanding to the gold with another planetary fortress and like 8 missile turrets. I was able to keep him off a 4th expo with mutas and I kept expanding while just spamming mutas to harass where I could. Finally after my mutas hit 1/1 and I had about 35 I ran them into his main and killed like 8 thors and his armories. He tried a last attack with 3 thors and 15 siege tanks but they got eaten, his response was "Spam more mutas". From the guy who just turtled up with siege tanks and planetary fortresses :/.

Not to mention if I was just spamming mutas I would've been eaten by the thors, I had to at least magic box!

10/18/2010 7:29:25 AM

Yeah going to hear a lot of terran QQ vs. zerg now with these changes. They got use to the ez mode vs. zerg and now that reaper harass to MMM/Thor doesn't work every game it is time to complain.

I'm enjoying that zerg can now dictate play somewhat vs. terran. Early expand to fast mutas and tech switch to roach/baneling which will counter thor/marine, or marine/med, or viking if that is what they choose to stop the mutas. Couldn't do that as easily before the patch since the switch to roach wasn't as effective, plus you spent the first 5 minutes of the game trying to not lose to reapers, or helions then the banshees would show up.

Honestly though now that the patch has had some time to set in I really don't like the reaper change. A change that basically renders a unit useless isn't a good change. All units should have some sort of purpose and all a reaper can do now is offer maybe an early game base scout and that is it. I think they just needed to increase the cost of reapers to 75/75 and the speed upgrade to 75/75. You could still go reapers that way if you wanted to early in a game but make it so that if it doesn't work the Terran is really hurting economically. Problem really was that before you could go like 2-6 reapers early, and even if it got shut down roll right into MMM, which was more the problem, not the actual reaper.

10/18/2010 12:14:34 PM

Quote :

" his response was "Spam more mutas". From the guy who just turtled up with siege tanks and planetary fortresses :/."

I don't have any problem with a zerg winning by spamming mutas againts terran. It's by no means a cheap way of getting a win when thors and marines both deal with them pretty effectively, vikings do okay, especially when supported by of the other two things. Protoss can feel pretty to be a little pissed because there's pretty much no way for a toss to effectively deal with critical numbers of muta. Phoenix are the "hard counter" that require intense micro to come even. Stalkers are meh against them, and don't work that great against speedlings (which is one big reason why ling/muta is a popular build against toss). The most effective thing are archons, but they're extremely resource heavy, slow, and have limited range.

10/18/2010 12:57:14 PM

Find it amazing how HT and storm is hardly used vs. zerg when that was the Zerg killer in SC1.

Archons in SC1 owned mutas, and so did storm. Does storm not hit air in SC2? I never even thought about that. If it does I imagine it would work against mutas. People use to defend expansions against mutas in SC1 with like 4-5 cannons and 2 templars. A well placed storm in SC1 would fry a batch of mutas in no time. Then when you were out of storm you just made archons which ate up lings and mutas.

10/18/2010 1:33:17 PM

^ bingo. storm/archons are the way to do it.

I love seeing stalkers or voids or phoenix when i have my muta-ball.

10/18/2010 2:23:30 PM

Yeah archons counter mutas pretty hard. I had a game against a toss where I went my standard fast mutas - I kept him contained to two bases while I took 4 and spread the creep but once he got the archons out I couldnt harass effectively anymore. I ended up massing roaches/hydras and wiping out his archon/gateway army, but the archons hurt pretty bad. He did try a few storms but with decent micro I was able to keep most of my mutas out of harms way as well as pick off a few templars so he went with the archons instead.

One thing that definitely has helped my muta harass is making sure my mutas swing by my base every now and then to get infused by my queens, definitely helps keep the numbers up.

^^^As for the terran, the only units I really hate seeing when I have mutas out are marines. Until I have a critical mass or decent upgrades marines rape them pretty hard. I have no issue with seeing thors since they are immobile and magic box is relatively effective at dealing with them.

I really think the muta is quickly becoming my favorite unit though, muta drive bys once you have +2 attack are soooo damn effective. When you can just shoot one volley off 20 mutas at a building and severely weaken/kill the units/scvs around it... I love it, glaive rules.

[Edited on October 18, 2010 at 8:58 PM. Reason : a]

10/18/2010 8:56:39 PM

Storm can work against air, but the mutas would be stupid to stay in the path of the storm long enough to be effective against them. You'd prefer to get the storm on the lings they'll have or whatever since you can more easily get the damage you want. HT are probably underused at less than pro levels just because they take a lot of control to get your moneys worth out of them. As quick as many zerg units are, especially lings and muta, it can be hard to protect such a fragile unit unless you always keep your army engaged in chokes. They're also expensive and these patches are making it hard for protoss to macro against zerg (roach upgrade makes forge FE harder)

HT are probably underused just because robo tech can abuse most players because the timings on it are so easy, and robo tech deals with everything on the ground so well. Like if you go 2 gate robo colossi in like any matchup, you can do big damage at the 3rd colossi (so long as you have the army to protect them ie: the 8ish stalkers and however many zealots and sentries)

Stalkers work okay against muta balls if you have blink and forge upgrades. It's just ridiculous that Phoenci do so poorly against mutas in numbers greater than like 10.

As far as magic boxing thors goes, sure it's a way to deal with them, but it's not very economical.

10/18/2010 11:41:29 PM

While magic boxing isn't the most economical solution it is an effective one if you can keep the terran contained. In the last game I was talking about where the terran was turtling hard he had about 7 thors against my 30 +2/+1 mutas, I lost probably 10-15 but it was well worth it as that was the majority of his army other then tanks so it allowed me to take out a large chunk of his base an effectively win the game.

10/19/2010 6:05:13 AM

Because of the bounce effect the more thors vs. mutas the more economical mutas become as a solution w/ the magic box.

10/19/2010 7:22:41 AM

Not to mention the fact that with 3 bases and 4 hatches I can push out mutas at a farrr greater rate then they are lost against 3 factories pushing out thors.

10/19/2010 7:48:14 AM

What's this magic box shit.

You people have a different language.

Haha....I just play.

10/19/2010 9:14:41 AM

It's a micro technique with Mutas to keep them from taking splash damage from thors. which makes them something like 5 times better against thors. If you don't do it thors will eat your mutas alive. If you do, while it's not economical (you will lose more resources in mutas than you will kill in thors, unless of course you can an absolutely ridiculous mass of muta and he doesn't have that mass of thors), you can deal with thors much easier.

[Edited on October 19, 2010 at 11:12 AM. Reason : asdf]

10/19/2010 11:11:11 AM

There is a very good youtube video that demonstrates it.

Basically if you move your mutas to a location, they'll clump up at first and then spread out into a formation where they don't overlap after 2-3 seconds. If you click all the mutas and move them around they will hold that formation unless you click an area that is inside the "box" of the mutas(so basically just right click toward the edge of the screen). Because they hold that formation the splash from thors will only hit one muta at a time. The trick is to move your mutas over the thors then just hit "hold position" and they will auto target the thors. Don't attack move, or specifically attack the thors because the mutas will clump up again.

If I new about this it would have probably allowed me to win 20+ games I lost because I was losing all my damn mutas to stupid thors in like 2 seconds.

[Edited on October 19, 2010 at 12:23 PM. Reason : 2 seconds not 20.]

10/19/2010 12:03:59 PM

Magic boxing is when you group your mutas and keep right clicking in the same spot until your mutas get in a tight bunch, then you let them spread out into a box. Then you move them (not attack move) and just press hold when over the thors. if you right click on one or attack move it will ruin the box. I was playing a game earlier and had around 20 thors in a guys base killing his tech labs on his 3 factories. 3 thors popped at the same time, i ran the mutas out to magix box and didn't move them far enough so the 3 thors each got a shot off that hit every single muta since they were so clumped. It was nearly a disaster but thankfully they all lived in the red

10/19/2010 12:20:03 PM

http://youtube.com/user/ArtosisTV

great replays of a few of idras matches as well as a somewhat interesting coverage of day 1 of the GSL.

10/19/2010 2:45:46 PM

Pretty amazing how bad some of these terran players are that managed to get decently high in Diamond. Just played a dude who was pretty bad, 1500 point terran. I just went fast expand, bling/muta/infestor pretty much most of the game.

He first tries to bunker/reaper rush me, then a push with reaper/marine/banshee, then like most terran players was just like "fuck it Thors, they will fix everything."

As I was taking out his last base, he goes "new patch made roaches so OP, it is a joke." I was like "I didn't make a roach until the 15 minute mark..." hes like "yeah I know but they are still OP."

I was just thinking no, what was OP was the number of games this hack managed to win with 9 rax/reaper play and now that you can't do that anymore he is lost. I think if Terran would just play zerg straight up, expand with them, use tanks and drop play they can own zerg but they insist on either winning the game early, throwing tons of money at reaper/helion/bunker harass, or fast banshee. All of which zerg can actually counter with scouting and proper units unlike before where you were screwed even if you knew it was coming. Going to be a ton of Terran QQ though because so many terran thought they were great at this game and now that there is some balance it is going to seem like zerg is OP vs. Terran when in reality it is pretty balanced ATM.

10/21/2010 9:59:18 AM

So this morning playing some 3v3's with randoms and my team spawns all as zergs. After we 7pool x3 and rape the other team one of the guys messages me about how I'm such a cheeser and the only reason I'm in diamond/platinum is because I use my bonus pool to inflate my points. After explaining to him that the bonus pool only effects your ranking, not your MMR which determines what league you are in he then started to talk about how he was top 500 in NA in 2v2 (hes like ~1200, which apparently is enough... its top 500 ) and how 2v2 is what all the pros want to play. This dude kept going on and on and on for like two hours messaging me while I was playing all morning about how 2v2 is the real game and yada yada. Sigh, fucking retards.

10/21/2010 8:06:08 PM

Anyone getting a corruption error at the game loading screen? Played three arranged 3v3 games tonight where 1 teammate got a corruption warning during the load screen and immediately dropped at the start of the game. Luckily, we won all 3

Still, he had to uninstall and reinstall, during which he got a beta-ish bug where the patches downloaded over and over before they finally applied.

10/21/2010 9:30:58 PM

^^^Re:Roaches, they aren't imba against terran. Marauders are a tier 1 unit that can still deal with roaches very well. Next thing you know he'll be saying Stalkers are imba. I don't think that the roach boost did anything but weaken some of terrans cheese

^^He does realize that team game are so far from refined that there isn't a single pro 2s, 3s, or 4s team? No tourney for team games. IIRC no balance. No pros play it seriously. All it is, is an attempt at fun

The best way to win a bunch in team games is to pressure early and counter. I'd say something like 70%+ of non-diamond level players cannot deal with good early pressure effectively (since they're more worried about unit mixtures than things like building placement, timing, and micro) if you can get away with triple <10 pools all the power to you.

[Edited on October 21, 2010 at 9:59 PM. Reason : asf]

10/21/2010 9:49:30 PM

Awesome work getting ourselves into the 4v4 bronze league last night ;P

Fun games though. I really at this point hate playing as protoss. I just think the unit variety now that void rays aren't a real option are pretty lame, and every game I feel like it is the same thing, either 4 gate, or 3 gate robo.

Did win a game this morning with Hydras.. was happy about that. I wish there was a speed upgrade for them like in SC1...

For next patch I'd love to see hydra speed and a cost change to 125/25. Want to see a carrier upgrade, make it a bit stronger. See reaper speed get changed to needing an engine bay not a factory, and see maurader concussion shell cost 100/100. Other than that game is really balanced at the moment I think. Zerg still has some issues but I think the last patch really helped.

10/22/2010 11:40:16 AM

haha mass storm against muta, thor, colossi, bioball might not have been the best idea, but it was fun carpet storming that bioball and missing the mutas bc of lag

10/22/2010 12:31:19 PM

Yeah I mean to be fair we went 3-2, we didnt do too bad and the two we lost were longer macro games where we just ended up down a couple xpos. I think something is up with the placements for team games with set teams anyways. I always end up seeded way lower then i should with set teams. I dont mind though because typically with set teams we are just having fun so I like racking up wins against baddies anyways.

Ill be on tonight/tomorrow afternoon if you guys want to do some more.

10/23/2010 1:57:24 PM

yeah i'll be on tonight after work around 6 or 7.

10/23/2010 2:42:27 PM

I'll see if my friend is on if you wanna redeem ourselves for that bad ranking and pwn n00bs. him and I are 9-2 in 2v2 right now with the two losses being lag outs.

10/23/2010 5:15:05 PM

oh shit i hope you guys dont turn this thread into one where every other post is about mounting up

10/23/2010 6:48:23 PM

Just watched Fruit Dealer v Boxer at blizzcon... good lord Fruit's baneling micro is sick.

10/24/2010 10:45:51 AM

i wanna do a funday monday build tonight for the lulz. i wanna go hellions, and feed someone gas after i get blue flame

10/24/2010 6:41:58 PM

What is with all these scrub protoss lately going 3 gate stargate mothership/carrier rush. They then push out a ton of carriers/zealots/stalkers. It's hard to counter unless you see the initial carrier. First time I saw it it actually raped me because I had gone mutas instead of corrupters after seeing a zealot heavy force and thinking he was going robo. This time I scouted a little better and thankfully saw the first carrier. Its a tough force to counter because they bunker in and you see the 3 gates and assume 4 gate, if they are smart they hide the stargate somewhere. A roach rush would counter it hard but its a little tough to do because I typically don't counter a 4 gate with roaches.

10/25/2010 7:21:22 AM

So as I hate the ZvZ matchup and I try to make it end fast I've started using what I found to be a pretty solid build. Pretty much I just go standard 14 gas/14 pool, pull the gas at 100 for speedlings, but just don't stop making speedlings ever. After my first 16 speedlings or so are out I'll typically throw down another hatch/queen. You are able to put sooo much pressure on with that many speedlings that eventually the other guy will crack. Either he goes roaches and dies when he pushes out and leaves his main unguarded, he goes speedlings but then gets overwhelmed if he thinks he can tech at all, or he goes banelings. The only real problem is banelings but banelings are so slow that with decent micro you can take them out. Not to mention they are eating up enough extra resources at the start that unless they are killing massive groups of your slings you will overwhelm your opponent. 16 drones can pump out lings from two hatches for quite a while. So far I'm 5/5 using this strat today against ~1400 diamond zergs.

10/25/2010 2:04:56 PM

^^holy can't support shit batman, one of those gates or the SG will be largely ignored. plus carriers are so damn expensive... expo, keep them on one base, and get corrupters and it's GG.

10/25/2010 3:38:17 PM

Like I said - its something that is very easy to counter it just caught me by surprise the first time I saw it. The three times since I have raped it. First time I just got screwed because I wasted an inject on mutas to poke in when I should've made corrupters, my second base wasnt fully saturated yet so I couldn't afford a full amount of corrupters for when he poked back.

Had a really funny toss game today - I was going for the 7RR and he managed to see the roaches den just as my lings killed him. He responds with a "god, every zerg these days is going for roaches". I promptly canceled the roach warren and took an xpo instead. I then made some +1 lings and when his army of immortals/stalkers pushed out I ran my lings in and raped his main. His response was "#%)*%)#*%#*%# BULLSHIT". He then GG's but doesn't stop playing, so his forces made it back in time to kill my lings before I finished off his nexus (I had only sent 20 lings or so). I then made 9 mutas and sent them around the back of his base, as soon as he moved his sentries/stalkers from the doorway to get the mutas I ran in another 40 lings. He say "@$*@$*@ I HATE ZERG" and rage quit.

10/25/2010 3:56:02 PM

idra won his GSL match today, making the guy he played look like a silver league player.

They had their first ZvZ today as well, it was pretty funny and ridiculous. Just crazy ling/bling back and forth, the announcers couldn't decide if it was really entertaining or really lame.

I have a ling/bling build that I use in ZvZ almost exclusively now. If they get to roaches before I get there typically a 50/50 chance I can still win. If they stay line I probably win 90% of the time. I also always stay one base, knowing I won't lose if I stay one base and they expand. The matchup is fun if you get to like the 10 min mark, but it never does.

10/25/2010 4:11:00 PM

Oh I have a really fun time with it now, I'm really enjoying the short matches compared to my longer zvt and zvp. Had a really funny one today on.. Jungle Basin I think? The one where you have the protected nat - I hid a drone in his nat and made a hatchery/queen and started pumping out lings. He was teching to mutas and actually managed to get 3 out while at the same time my two pronged attack of like 20 lings each hit him and he was toast :p.

10/25/2010 4:15:46 PM

if carriers weren't so expensive, and didn't lag so much in 4v4/3v3, i'd use them a lot more often. after you get like 4, they rape everything but mass VR/marines/vikings/corrupters

10/26/2010 2:40:40 AM

Playing on Steppes and the terran has 3 marines with a no add on rax at his wall in, I assume hes teching to banshees so I go for a bust. He runs a marine out as I'm morphing in 8 banelings right outside his base and rather then spreading out his marines he tries to clump them up on the wall to kill the blings. Turns out he was teching to tanks, but it was no matter as my lings ran in and raped him after the bust.

"Go screw yourself OP Zerg".

I love all the terran whiners.

Apparently a minor balance patch coming soon, I wonder what the balance is.

10/26/2010 5:44:45 PM

hopefully marauder nerf and toss buff

10/26/2010 7:08:17 PM

It is amazing how many bad Terrans thought they were good and now can't win a game.


Tomorrow morning is the final RO32 games for the GSL, and both FruitDealer and Boxer are playing games. Will be setting the alarm and watching.

[Edited on October 26, 2010 at 8:30 PM. Reason : .]

10/26/2010 8:26:08 PM

Didn't realize there is a free lower quality stream. I thought they only did that for the first games of r64. Didn't wake up in time to see fruit vs fakeboxer but apparently fruit got raped.

10/27/2010 7:11:53 AM

You guys set your alarms to watch replays of a video game?

That's pretty fucking hardcore. Ah, to be in college again.

I'm enjoying the colonial line wars map. It's all I've been playing lately.

Any other good custom maps?

10/27/2010 10:36:38 AM

Well I managed to watch the first game with FruitDealer but then fell back asleep. They aren't replays, if you get up then they are actually live but I usually will watch some replays later in the day of missed games. Def. by far the nerdiest thing I've ever done but I find it entertaining so don't really care.

In the FruitDealer game he plays the fake BoxeR(who is currently #1 on the Korean ladder) and just gets owned. First game to a double rax marine push, second game to marine drops followed by mass marine/medivac. So pretty big upset.

Real Boxer also won, which is great for SC2 in general the more he wins. He won both games with really well placed proxy Banshee rushes. Tomorrow will be good games as well, with Idra playing a ZvZ and I don't know if I've ever seen him play zvz in a tournament.

10/27/2010 1:10:24 PM

My dogs have me up at 6:30 am anyways every day so I was up while the games were on . I'm off this week so it gives me something to do early in the morning.

10/27/2010 1:17:53 PM

dzags18 and I just schooled some kids in CLW when we were outnumbered. The key to victory was dos carriers up the gut FTW.

10/27/2010 1:46:03 PM

Haha the key to the almost loss was building banelings. Don't!

Just had the stupidest 1v1 ever. Playing a toss, he goes for a forge expand, I decide to baneling bust as there is one pylon powering 2 cannons and 2 gateways right at the ramp. I bust, get into his main and destroy all his probes. Of course at this point what do I do? Build more lings to throw at his natural which at this point had 3 cannons and several zealots. After sacrificing 40 lings to kill almost nothing he powers ahead in econ as I couldnt kill his main nexus. I start massing roaches to go for the kill and around 100 supply push out. Of course he promptly runs me over with 50 stalkers and 2 carriers.

Sigh. Should've just droned up and taken a 3rd/4th and gone mass hydra.

10/27/2010 2:55:16 PM

Yeah... I make that mistake all the time too. Try to go for the kill when there is a chance it might not work instead of just pulling so far ahead there is no way to lose.

But it is natural, I don't want the game to take another 15 minutes if I can end it in 3. That is what I'm so impressed with from the pros. They can sit down and play game after game doing the same strat that will typically lead to a 15-20 minute long game. Every 3rd game I play I'm like "fuck it I'm going to try to end this game in 8 minutes and I'll either win or lose horribly."

I signed up to play in a tournament tonight. So far in tournament play I'm 0-3 and have lost horribly each time. We'll see how tonight goes, maybe I can get to the 2nd round!

10/27/2010 6:20:20 PM