Got another tournament tonight at 8PM! On Sunday I embarrassed myself so we'll see how it goes tonight.

11/3/2010 6:54:18 PM

gl hf

11/3/2010 7:12:07 PM

awesome. I got supply blocked because i missed an ol and died to lings against a horrible first round opponent.

11/3/2010 8:11:14 PM

Sucks

And as for PvZ protis - you shouldn't have much to worry about, at <diamond chances are every zerg you go against will go for a roach rush, just prepare for that and its np.

11/3/2010 9:55:23 PM

That sucks, double elim?

And yea, after enjoying toss the most in one, having high hope for blink stalkers, and never being a fan of zerg I think I will atleast for now start with toss (plus watching those IdrA vs NonY showmatches didn't hurt)

11/3/2010 10:01:20 PM

Single elimination

website for the tournament is nationalesl.com and they do them every Wednesday and Sunday. So far I've done it 4 times, lost in the first round 3 times, and then once managed to win and then get crapped on by Fenix.

If I just did my normal ling/bling I do vs. zerg I would have won easily but I tried to get cute and do a pool/expand build that I hardly ever do, missed an OL and got supply blocked when his lings were halfway to my base. The guy even had the nerve to message me and be like, "don't worry man ZvZ is tough" like I was some noob. I told him to fuck off and just be happy I missed my OL.

Oh well, there is always this Sunday.

11/3/2010 11:32:48 PM

a little advise on learning protoss:
-Always build probes
-Don't forget pylons
-On each base you can only support economywise either 4 gates or 2 gates and a tech building (stargate/robo). 4 gate is your friend early on, as it can be very successful in all 3 matchups, and it dominates PvP.
-Keep your money low
-Watch HuK, NexGenius, Tester, Kiwikaki, and NonY(LiquidTyler). Those are 5 of the best protoss, and they have plenty of videos on youtube and replays you can download.

11/4/2010 11:40:38 AM

So, I just took the plunge and bought this game yesterday. Still playing through campaign at the moment...

Already pretty certain I'm going to play Protoss, since they were my preference in the first game. Not that I was great (or even good) at SC1, but I was at least ok with Toss. Zerg was playable for me, and I absolutely hated terran (both playing as and playing against).

Quote :

"-On each base you can only support economywise either 4 gates or 2 gates and a tech building (stargate/robo)."

When you say "support" a tech building, you mean support a tech building that is actively researching, right? Rather than one that is just being built for the sake of unlocking other buildings and units?

And here's an unrelated question, seeing as you play the race: What high-templar-using builds are there, if any, and what pros might I watch who would be using them? Based on my inexperienced preliminary analysis, seems like they'd be really effective grouped with stalkers and a couple sentries...

11/4/2010 5:52:01 PM

^ I think what he means by "support" is the # of buildings you can have actively producing units all the time while maintaining your economy.

Quote :

" And here's an unrelated question, seeing as you play the race: What high-templar-using builds are there, if any, and what pros might I watch who would be using them? Based on my inexperienced preliminary analysis, seems like they'd be really effective grouped with stalkers and a couple sentries..."

High templar are a great counter against clustered units (mutas, lings, marines) with their psi storms. they also merge into archons which are awesome and quite underused from what i've seen.

I personally am a fan of 2-gate+Robo as I prefer getting immortals early on

[Edited on November 4, 2010 at 7:12 PM. Reason : ]

11/4/2010 7:11:12 PM

support = constantly producing something from that building.

Quote :

"and what pros might I watch who would be using them?"

off the top of my head i would recommend HuK and KiwiKaki for toss pros


[Edited on November 4, 2010 at 7:18 PM. Reason : *]

11/4/2010 7:17:34 PM

NEXGenious is prob best Toss player out there, although probably tougher to find cause he is Korean. Worth watching the two mentioned above.. also LiquidTyler is very good.

Seems generally agreed that right now high templars although good are to expensive for mid game, so right now pretty much every toss either goes mass gates, or a certain number of games with 1 or 2 robotics bays.

The easiest thing to do when you start playing is just learn a standard 1 base 4 warp gate build. That will be a relatively safe build, allow you to win games, and practice using warp gates/proxy pylons and using sentry force fields which are pretty essential for toss.

11/4/2010 7:46:53 PM

Quote :

"The easiest thing to do when you start playing is just learn a standard 1 base 4 warp gate build. That will be a relatively safe build, allow you to win games, and practice using warp gates/proxy pylons and using sentry force fields which are pretty essential for toss."

Yeah, I'd already gathered that from this thread and other SC2-related resources, but... well, honestly, "safe" just strikes me as "boring", even if it is a generally winning strategy. I'd rather run something interesting rather than the same damn build that every other newer toss player is going to use (not necessarily high templars, seeing as you say they're too much of an investment to try throwing out early-mid, but at least something kinda different), even if that does mean not winning as much... but maybe that attitude is why I've never been a big starcraft player in the first place.

[Edited on November 4, 2010 at 7:56 PM. Reason : .]

11/4/2010 7:55:23 PM

There are some very fun things you can do with protoss. Blink stalkers are still my favorite unit. Warp prism play is probably the next evolution in protoss play. Watch game two of that White-Ra vs. NexGenius game at Blizzcon to see the next big evolution in 4gating.

High Templar are a very very situational unit. You'll never see them in a PvP, even when people try to mix it up. They're useful against bioballs. They're probably the best, but hardest to use late counter to bioballs from zerg or terran. They're just so expensive and fragile though. You need a twilight council and a templar archives on top of your cybercore just to get them, and then it's another upgrade if you want to get storm (just feedbacking things would be a waste of getting them especially since feedback was nerfed by taking away some unit's energy) and another upgrade so the templar spawn with enough energy to storm.

People tend to use colossi as the bioball counter, which is great unless they have vikings/corrupters to snipe them.

11/4/2010 8:37:10 PM

I hate Corruptors. I've never once built one and thought to myself "This is the right choice. This is what I need here."

11/4/2010 9:40:20 PM

Corrupters are very useful units. Very good against Colossi, BCs, and I'd assume carriers but I've never seen a ladder match with zerg where someone went for carriers (in before HuK beats Fruitdealer in the next GSL with Carriers and a Mothership)

11/4/2010 9:43:59 PM

I've been carrier rushed on ladder before. Corrupters are always useful against them and they are awesome against colossi. Roach/hydra with a few corrupters mixed in owns.

So titans and I were playing some 2v2s tonight, we were going sling/sling with me getting a fast +1, absolutely raping folks. Well one of the games I didnt realize what I was building and my BO was 14 gas, 14 evo chamber, 16 in base hatch (at this point im mashing queen not realizing its not building) and finally 20 pool. Timing worked out nicely in the end as my +1 and speed finished at the same time

Also played a game of DOTA:Sotis tonight, randomed Tosh... holy shit, I love that character now, he might be my new favorite. I went 20-6-18, it was brutal. I was getting double/triple kills all over.

11/4/2010 10:59:58 PM

some people are absolutely brutal with Tosh. Played one night with a pretty good team, but there was a Tosh on the other team we HAD to triple to maybe kill.

11/5/2010 3:35:48 PM

lol @idra, in this game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_uxCIrM11w

he tells HuK:
"lol"
"you are very talented"

and then leaves a couple seconds later



[Edited on November 6, 2010 at 2:29 AM. Reason : asdf]

11/6/2010 2:27:12 AM

MLG going on this weekend in Dallas.

I was trying to listen to the stream while playing w/ Ego and Zags last night and the result was terrible lag and me not really paying attention to our games. Between the lag and my lack of focus I think I was probably pretty frustrating to play with especially the one game when Zags was like, "Um... you wanna help me out here?" As my 50 lings just stood there.

I do suggest when the VODs or replays are posted from MLG that you watch the first TLO vs. Torch game. It was pretty epic. TLO has switched to zerg, and is really fun to watch. Tons of Nydus worms, he even nydus a queen into Torch's base and lays down offensive creep tumors. Torch sneaks an expansion and goes BattleCruisers. Was a great game, worth watching won't say who wins.

11/6/2010 10:28:00 AM

So, been watching Day9 daily clips on youtube, and his commentaries are seriously the best shit. I'm learning a shit-ton about how the game is played, and besides that he actually says stuff that is informative and relevant to the game rather than just going off on pointless tangents or stating the obvious like Husky.

11/6/2010 11:34:47 AM

Day9 is probably the best place you can go to learn starcraft. Psy is pretty good too, but he only does zerg. I watch it to help me understand zerg.

instead of going on youtube I'd suggest going to http://day9tv.blip.tv

11/6/2010 4:07:36 PM

Haven't watched any of the matches but looking at the bracket it seems like there have been quite a few upsets at MLG. I like the current state of the game where the top is just so in flux, I'm sure it will be like this for a while but its nice not having a clear dominating player at every tournament. I'm glad Machine finally managed to survive InControl, and it seems like Team Liquid is doing pretty well.

11/6/2010 7:50:00 PM

Team liquid seems to be doing really well. surprisingly enough ret took out huk 2-0. And Nazgul and SelecT took out Idra.

11/6/2010 8:50:30 PM

Nony vs. Painuser right now. Game one on Lost temple Nony goes for a 3 gate push into expo and attack, Pain user goes 2 rax expo. Nony does a TON of damage with forcefields, and gets a HUGE advantage.... and MLG decides they have to stop play because it was on the wrong map.

11/6/2010 9:22:46 PM

and Liquid.Tyler gets 0-2d afterward. I would be upset if I were nony right now.

11/6/2010 10:02:51 PM

Yeah I'm definitely interested to listen to State of the Game after this. For those of you who dont listen to it its a podcast about SC (obviously) and its usually pretty entertaining. Nony is often one of the guests and I want to see what he has to say about what happened. Seems like this has been a pretty drama filled tournament, looks like there are still some good matchups left to be played and its looking really balanced right now (4 zerg, 4 terran, 4 toss). Also good to see TLO doing well with Zerg.

11/7/2010 7:41:54 AM

lololol MLG finals game is delayed because of lag!


that game was epic, but everyone got DC'd. fucking b.net

to explain why it was epic just imagine this: jinro holds an interesting colossus rush, and then before the game dc'd he landed a manner factory in tt1's expo's probe line

[Edited on November 7, 2010 at 5:25 PM. Reason : :/]

11/7/2010 5:19:50 PM

watching MLG and recent showmatches, it looks like massive amounts of sentries for forcefields and 2 base play is the key to beating zerg (and of course using that to usually take you to the late game as those pushes nony used to idra don't always win the game)

11/7/2010 9:26:39 PM

Force fields do rape pretty damn hard. I've gotten severely fucked over by them many times in situations where my army was twice as big and had twice the upgrades just due to good forcefields.

So I just played a 2v2, it was ZT vs PP. I 7pool and take out a good chunk of probes while my partner gets his first army up. I was busy with the ling micro so I didnt notice his army too much, then I see he has a couple reapers sitting in the front of his base, which he lets an enemy probe see. He then says that the marines are for the goons and the reapers are for the lots . So when the toss push us his army consists of like 20 marines, 5 marauders, 5 hellions and 5 reapers, and it actually did surprisingly well against the gateway push. So we trade armies a few times before we finally end up pushing, this guy had the most random ass army ever, he added some banshees and ravens to the mix along with his infantry/hellions from before and actually managed to straight rape pretty well, it was impressive.

11/7/2010 9:49:19 PM

because ravens are pretty damn strong and when terran finally realize that they'll have a new very strong weapon at their disposal.

11/7/2010 10:16:09 PM

i've seen TLO absolutely pwn with mass raven

11/7/2010 10:52:32 PM

New patch, nothing really changed except thors will autoattack ground units over medivacs

11/9/2010 3:17:26 PM

^Why did they make that change? Trying to encourage people to micromanage their fights more or something?

11/9/2010 3:20:58 PM

thors do insane ground damage, and it's more beneficial if they are attacking like marines or something

11/9/2010 3:25:51 PM

So, played a few practice games so far...

For the most part I've won easily simply by remembering to constantly build probes, even despite occasionally supply-blocking myself for 10+ seconds at a time every now and then. Most of those games I've still ended up with roughly twice as much supply/army size as the enemy, though... Seems like a lot of these newer players just stop building workers once they have about 20. Maybe that sort of thing can squeak out wins in campaign, I dunno.

One guy, though, had somewhat better macro/economy-building than I did (largely because I didn't realize that the map had an expansion that was still protected by the rock barrier and thus I never bothered expanding), but he inexplicably chose to go for mass battlecruisers, without researching yamato cannon for some reason... It was damn intimidating at first, especially since it made all my chargelots basically worthless, but thankfully, large amounts of blink stalkers slaughter almost everything.

...In the interest of fairness, I should probably just skip the rest of my practice league games and jump on into the bronze ladder, but since slaughtering other newbies is kinda fun, I'll go ahead and make the excuse that I need more time to refine my hotkey usage...


Anyway, if anyone ever wants to play some custom games or AI co-op or something, my tag is DrHappiness.

[Edited on November 9, 2010 at 11:51 PM. Reason : .]

11/9/2010 11:47:07 PM

you should probably jump on ladder so you can learn how to scout, and then learn how to macro offscreen

i figured out how to scout pretty quickly just by watching a ton of games. macroing off screen allows you to actively scout and micro/macro. I still slip on it

[Edited on November 9, 2010 at 11:54 PM. Reason : aasdf]

11/9/2010 11:52:54 PM

Yeah, I've got the general idea of hitting 4-e every now and again to keep the probe-building going (nexus bound to 4 obviously), but between not really knowing when to/not really wanting to take a probe off of gathering and send him to scout, plus trying to constantly eye my mineral totals to know when to drop the next gateway/cybercore/pylon/whatever else, I just haven't bothered yet.

I suppose it sounds a bit obvious, but if it were just a matter of probe-harassing their supply line while timing the "4e" keys, I'm sure I'd be able to do it just fine. It's having to manage the other buildings that fucks with my attention.

[Edited on November 10, 2010 at 12:02 AM. Reason : .]

11/10/2010 12:01:33 AM

you can honestly scout whenever you want, you just need to be able to not to let your APM/production drop while you're doing it.

11/10/2010 1:13:51 AM

^^You need to add your character code to your name so we can find you, you can find it by holding your cursor over the top right corner with your portrait.

I personally scout on 9, I play zerg and it helps me stop a ton of cheese, but I also have the advantage of being able to park an overlord near their base as well and get a little scouting boost there. I've gotten much better at playing defensively based on whether they are taking their second or not, I've absolutely raped two toss on delta quadrant in my last two matches just with improved reactions to scouting an expo/not scouting one.

If I were you I would probably scout after making your initial pylon at the wall in, at your level you will probably see a ton of cheese and that will allow you time to react to a 6 pool, cannon rush, proxy or whatever.

11/10/2010 7:03:35 AM

Yeah scouting can really be divided up into 3 timings, and different methods during each of those timings. You got your early game probe scout, your mid game observer scout, and late game which is basically any unit searching for 3/4th expands.

As a toss, you want to scout with a probe sometime from 10-13. This is your early game scout and what you'll find is that little things really can tell you a lot. Against terran you want to get that probe in their base before they wall off. Then you can look for the addons they are building on the barracks, and look at their gas. Late gas, or 1 gas probably Marine/Maurader. If they have early 2 gas expect banshee/tech.

Toss isn't as important, but you want to check for 2 gate rush, although you'll usually see Gate/Core. But again, check the gas. Early 2 gas could mean fast robotics, void rays, or even dts. But you'll know some sort of tech. 1 gas 1 core, 1 gate then you'll be seeing a 4 warpgate push. Also you are checking for a fast expand, you'll know this if they are building cannons/gateways outside their natural expand.

Against zerg you are looking for an early expand, pretty simple. And as you get better you can actually put a pylon at their early expansion spot to block it. But if you see a zerg early expanding you know you won't get early pressure and you can either expand yourself, or mass forces quick and hit around the 8 minute mark. If they don't early expand expect to get attacked with early roaches so prepare for that.

That should at least cover you for early game scouting.

11/10/2010 8:22:55 AM

Wow, those were some nicely informative posts. Thanks.

So, the general idea I'm getting here is that for almost every race, expanding means that they're going to be teching up or building up for a more long-term strategy, while using one base for a longer time means that they're more likely to rush early... that about right?

Quote :

"1 gas 1 core, 1 gate then you'll be seeing a 4 warpgate push."

I was under the impression that pylon->gate->gas->pylon->core->gas (or something similar... constructing an additional pylon might have come before the gas, I don't recall) was a pretty common build order for almost any protoss strategy, besides some sort of cheesy early zealot rush... correct me if I'm wrong though.



Also, character code: 386 -- tag: DrHappiness

[Edited on November 10, 2010 at 8:43 AM. Reason : .]

11/10/2010 8:41:53 AM

^Yeah the general idea is that you can't expand and pressure at the same time. So if you see a fast expand it doesn't always mean tech but it usually means you won't see early heavy pressure. Sometimes you'll get like some harass while someone expands. The key is if you see a fast expand, either cut probes around 24-26 and pump units to try to end it before the expansion really gets up and running, or expand yourself. A lot of people make the mistake of staying on one base and like teching up. You'll be so far behind that even if you have greater tech, like a robo and colosi, he'll just have such a better economy you won't be able to win.

That is the general 3 gate robo build you listed, but if you keep your probe alive in his base long enough, which you should be able to, you can see how early they get that 2nd gas. The early 2nd gas doesn't always mean tech, could just mean a sentry heavy army, but if you have your probe in there and the core is up and he is building gates and still has no 2nd gas you know you are going to see stalkers/ground mostly. Toss just can't afford to tech really on one gas very well. So the later that gas, the later the tech and VERY early gas like 2 gas before core you know tech is coming. It is helpful because if you don't see the 2nd gas early, you can assume mostly a stalker army and try to get some immortals out which eat up stalkers.

What you want to be able to do when scouting is not figure out exactly what they are doing, but what they aren't doing. So no early 2nd gas, no crazy tech cheese like VR or DT. For terran without that early 2nd gas it is hard to do a cloak banshee push early. Knowing that can save you the 100 gas on an early Observer and put toward units that could make the difference.

11/10/2010 9:27:30 AM

Yeah I still haven't gotten good enough at identifying what means what when I'm scouting, its something that I really need to work on. You can get pretty decent though by just being able to identify the main things, whether they are expanding, rushing or turtling. Typically I'll sac an overlord relatively early (doing it early often means the overlord can survive if you are sneaky) to check out what they are up to. You don't need to be able to identify exactly what they are doing to succeed, at least at the lower levels (I'm currently 1600~ diamond), just the general idea.

As a toss I would highly recommend taking advantage of sentry scouting. If your plan is to go some sort of gateway only build then it is a pretty expensive mineral/gas sink to get 1 observer, so using a sentry to hallucinate a phoenix and scout with that is mega useful. I actually had a toss who played me pretty well - he went 1 gate/2 robo and sent like 5 phoenix at once and just sort of darted in and out of my base without attacking much, I assumed he was going stargate and built hydras, when he came walking into my base with a bunch of zealots, sentries and colossi I was not happy.

11/10/2010 12:22:50 PM

Quote :

"I was under the impression that pylon->gate->gas->pylon->core->gas (or something similar... constructing an additional pylon might have come before the gas, I don't recall) was a pretty common build order for almost any protoss strategy, besides some sort of cheesy early zealot rush... correct me if I'm wrong though."

9-pylon
12/13-Gate
14-Gas
16-Pylon
18-Core

is considered to be playing "standard" from there it really depends on what you wanna do. If you wanna go robo/star tech, or quick twilight council tech you'll get a quicker second gas. It's pretty common to delay that second gas or completely skip it if you wanna 4 gate push. Other people skip it in favor of setting up for a quick expo. Other people get the second gas so they can get a lot of sentries, which makes their money high and lets them expo quicker.

Tech cheese usually involves something like a 2nd gas before core, and sometimes a first gas before gateway.

On when to scout, Huk generally scouts after the 9-pylon. I generally do as well. Scouting on 9 gives you time to scout out some of the more cheesier builds like 6-pool, proxy gate/barracks, and usually cannon rushing, and it doesn't hurt your econ that bad if you are chronoboosting probes. If you can learn how to actively scout without missing building placements or probes or building units, you can improve your play a ton because nothing will surprise you. If you can keep that scout probe alive for a while, and maybe harass their workers with it (this is a higher level move and is pretty APM intensive) it's even better.

Another key is to make sure you're not just scouting the base, but after a little bit look around for hidden expos, hidden things like stargate/ports. Also want to make sure you can scout the base after your initial scout. Whether that's flying in an observer, if they haven't walled off maybe sacking a probe, of flying in an actual/hallucinated phoenix, it's very important that you get another scout in.

Also if you can get good map control, it can be beneficial to poke at a terran/toss wall off with stalkers, or poke at a zerg's expo. This will allow you to get a gauge on their army size, and sometimes force a zerg to make units instead of droning hard. If you can park units outside the zerg's expo and force him to make units in this way, as long as you don't lose any yourself you can find a way to gain an economic advantage.

11/10/2010 1:19:16 PM

[Edited on November 10, 2010 at 1:19 PM. Reason : doublepost]

11/10/2010 1:19:16 PM

Few things suck more than getting kicked out of a game you're about to win because your computer just happened to run out of battery... while plugged into a wall socket which just happened to be connected to a lightswitch... which just happened to be turned off.

11/10/2010 6:51:49 PM

Just had an interesting ZZT vs PTT where both tm8s lagged out around 30 seconds into the game. It immediately became a 3on1. Neither of my tm8s had any structures. I thought "damn, I'm probably fucked", but I stayed anyways. I had tm8s build a 2nd hatch and 3 barracks while I teched to mutas asap. I also had them each do a gas. Then I just had the guy on the left pump lings and the guy on the right pump marines. By the time my first batch of mutas were ready, I had about 60 supply each of slings and marines. I sent in both bio-balls w/o any expectations.

It was a complete slaughter; they had utterly no defenses! I'd been totally written me off by my opponents. Each was teching to their highest tier units when, suddenly, their bases were inundated with lings and marines.

11/10/2010 10:24:28 PM

It took me forever to figure out what tm8s was.

Also, I really need to downvote Lost Temple as Zerg. It's just terribly unfriendly when you play against Terran.

11/11/2010 12:55:07 AM

Ha yes LT is a DEF zerg thumb down.

My 3 right now are LT, Delta Quad, and Steps.

11/11/2010 9:19:37 AM

The only reason I'm inclined to not vote it down is because all of my issues with that map stem back to having shitty map control. Like -- there's no way that someone should be able to get a Siege Tank on the ledge near my natural, but I always forget to move an Overlord there to keep it scouted.

And don't get me started on how often I think I have all Terran expansions killed only to find those fuckers on the islands after the PF is built and they've got like 7 turrets up.

11/11/2010 9:46:02 AM