^ Yeah, now I understand why Husky was looking for a Lambo for a while... I LOL'd!

11/22/2010 12:07:00 AM

So this latest trend of marine/scv pushes in response to a 14 hatch makes me lol. Its just so stupid how OP it actually is. Terran this morning pushes out with like 20 marines and 20 scvs. Unfortunately for him he spent a minute killing my natural while I built 8 blings in my main and boom. Then thanks to the power of mules he was able to push again with like 15 marines and 10 scvs like a minute or two later. If I didnt manage to get those blings in then I would've been fried. I think terran have found a response to zerg fast expanding and I think we are going to start seeing a lot more in base hatch 1 base zerg play.

11/22/2010 7:49:17 AM

just went like 12-1-10 in dota with zealot. you can get STUPIDLY powerful with any hero if they let me solo a lane for a while without having to heal

11/22/2010 4:50:59 PM

11/23/2010 9:06:18 AM

Had a funny one this morning - playing on shakuras ZvT. I went 15 hatch 16 pool to banelings. We both spawned top so he goes MMM with a small force and tries to break down the back door. Well he was a moron and had built a random rax with a techlab and a supply depot at the base of his ramp. So I have my lings kill that while he has to pull his forces back from killing the rocks (at this point they had broken through the first set). So after I kill his shit at the base of the ramp I morph in about 16 banelings at his natural, plus 6 more at my main. As he comes busting through the rocks I bling bust him and head for the mineral line, at the same time he tries to target fire my lair and my 6 blings just walk right into the middle of his army of 15 marines and 3 marauders and instantly kill all of them. At this point he says "god banelings so OP and easy" and rage quits.

I sent him a message after and he went on and on about how banelings were so OP because they have an aoe, so I compared them to tanks. He then said tanks weren't better despite the fact that they shoot at range, can move, and don't die when they damage other units. Then I told him how blings were only OP against bad terrans . He then raged hard throughout my next game about how I obviously had no life and no job, etc etc.

Stupid ass terrans.

11/23/2010 9:52:16 AM

Your first mistake was trying to reason with him.

11/23/2010 10:33:46 AM

Zags - Used your dumb ling build this morning and it worked both times, once against a Toss, and once against a 2000 point Zerg. I have to imagine these people aren't happy, since I'm still only plat but keep playing 1800+ point diamond people. That is a lot of points to lose.

Anyway, I signed up for another tournament which is tonight. Somehow, I guess it was random? I'm the 16th seed in this tournament w/ 100s of people including several big names like TTOne, and some EG/Liquid players. So tonight I have a best of 3 against another zerg. I got a bye in the first round which was sweet-again no idea why I'm seeded so high. I get to pick first map, so gonna go jungle and do your ling build. If it doesn't work, I'm blaming you.

11/23/2010 10:55:52 AM

you should have told him "you want to play terran? just build marawwwwders dood!"

I have no problem with banelings, but then again I play toss

[Edited on November 23, 2010 at 11:32 AM. Reason : asdf]

11/23/2010 11:30:14 AM

where do you sign up for these tournaments?

11/23/2010 11:46:29 AM

the team liquid community always has some online tourney going.

11/23/2010 11:56:38 AM

Flue- only issue with doing it on a map like jungle basin is that the other zerg typically will see the pool and assume early aggression and throw up a spine. It works best on a 4 player map where the other zerg might play a little more passive. It also works great on whatever that desert map is with the backdoor rocks. As soon as I get rid of his scout I kill my own rocks which should finish just as your 24th ling spawns. Then you are at least halfway across the map before he can react, in which case he is screwed.

I have lost once with the build- 7 RR with a in base spinecrawler. Not sure why he built the spine as he was 7rr, but otherwise I wouldve won.

11/23/2010 3:00:20 PM

desert oasis or blistering sands? the first has some backdoor rocks i think but a STUPIDLY long rush distance by ground. the other has the most easily exploitable backdoor rocks. I've seen a many games where a zerg uses that to break a walling off terran/toss

11/23/2010 3:11:38 PM

Lokken - Usually find the tournaments on team liquid. I play in the nationalesl.com which does one on Wednesdays and Sundays frequently, and this is the big one that EG runs. I usually play in them not because I think there is a shot in hell I'd win, but because you can sometimes play against some known opponents and that is pretty cool. I've played Fenix and Ganon(top 200 player) now and I'd never get that chance otherwise.

Zags/Ego - Well here was my thinking, and I've never gotten to map pick before and I think it is important because if I get the first win I think I'll be relaxed and play a lot better. Only reason I'm taking it quasi serious is that w/ the bye round, and this dude who looks to be very beatable I'm already in the round of 32. Anyway, if I pick steps it is to obvious I'm rushing so that is out. I don't want to pick a 4 player map because he has to scout and higher chance he'll see the ling rush. If I pick blistering and my first attack doesn't work because he goes roaches it will be hard to defend with the rocks when he counters. I think Jungle is my best bet to have the rush work, and be able to defend if it doesn't by quickly getting a few roaches myself or spreading the creep fast to the ramp and getting a spine/ling defense. Also, on Jungle I can run my lings in such a way where his scouting OL coming to my base might not see them, where on Blistering or some of the 4 player maps the towers/OL will def see the lings.

11/23/2010 3:56:29 PM

Yeah and I guess jungle isn't too bad of a map since its one of the few 1v1s where you might consider going FE in a zvz. I actually won with the strat on jungle earlier today as well. One of the nice things about it is I'm finding in 50% of the games I'm taking out their first overlord because the queen comes so early. And on jungle the timing did work out perfectly that I ran my lings right past his second overlord without him seeing them.

11/23/2010 6:30:00 PM

lol some diamonds decided to double cannon rush me and my friend who was playing terran. he relocates and proxy reapers one guy, while I "counter" cannons with cannons, get a couple immortals then get quick +1/1 colossi with range. he leaves after they get his base, i steamroll

11/23/2010 6:42:02 PM

lost 1-2 =/ won the first game w/ ling build on jungle as planned. lost the 2nd in a roach war, lost the 3rd to banelings.

11/23/2010 9:31:09 PM

Gah At least the build worked for one.

11/23/2010 9:46:12 PM

Pretty happy with how gsl3 has gone so far. Looks like lots of solid matchups in the ro32.

11/25/2010 4:02:06 PM

My frustration with this game:

Winning solid games against diamond players then losing to bronze teams. So annoying

11/25/2010 6:04:45 PM

If you are talking about winning vs diamond players 1v1 then losing to bronze 2v2 teams, that can be expected sometimes. 2v2 is so random and fluctuates so much. If you are playing with a random partner and get a team of two guys who are on skype together their ranking often times won't really matter as they will be so coordinated. 2v2's are really tough to play at any level if you don't have a set plan with your partner and know how they play. Titans78 and I have gotten pretty good at 2v2 just because we know how the other plays, but we would still benefit greatly from being on skype or something.

And if you are talking about beating diamond 1v1 and losing to bronze 1v1, well if someone is bronze and playing you then it just means their hidden rating is really high, and thats the stupid shit that the ladder is made up of. Just like titans78 was talking about crushing ~1800 diamond people with his platinum account without being promoted... the ladder is retarded, thats about all you can say about it.


So I was thinking we should have a TWW tournament, maybe set some rules to make things more balanced for people who are not as good at the game to still have a chance or something, we would have to discuss it, but I think it would be fun. How many people would be interested in doing it? Not sure if we have too many SC2 lurkers but it would be nice to get at least 12 people.

11/26/2010 9:00:39 AM

When would this be? It sounds like alot of fun, but I'd like to do it when school is done for the semester. Even if I was too busy to play, I'd like to at least be an observer. Never done that before, I've always wanted to try it out. Maybe by then, Blizz will have released their "e-sports" patch w/ chat channels and we can all meet in a TWW channel?

11/26/2010 10:30:09 AM

Id be interested in a TWW tournament. Would be cool.

11/26/2010 10:53:54 AM

A tournament would be a good time. I'd be in. Observing the games as well would be entertaining.

11/26/2010 11:47:03 AM

I know 2, possibly 3 others that could be interested as well.

11/26/2010 12:17:41 PM

perhaps the way to set it up is do like group play.

Make groups of 4 players and then play everyone in your group in a BO3, if you win you get 3 points, loss 0 points. The top 2 from each group would then be seeded in like an "a" tournament, and the bottom 2 seeded in a "b" tournament.

Would be a fun way to get everyone a lot of games and then create 2 relatively even tournaments.

Tournament winner gets the honor of being myself/Ego/Zags 4th partner for 4v4s

11/26/2010 1:18:11 PM

I mean the easiest way to do it is probably going to be if we just set the brackets then have everyone meet with their opponent within 2 days or something. If we do set times for all the matches and try to have them the same night it probably won't go as well. I'd be down for setting it up if we can get enough people interested, it doesn't have to be just wolfweb/ncsu people, we could maybe see if we can get enough people to do like a UNC bracket vs an NCSU bracket. But just post here if you are interested or if you know anyone else who is.

dzags18 - zags.414

[Edited on November 26, 2010 at 7:25 PM. Reason : a]

11/26/2010 7:25:07 PM

zags speedling build would eat me alive, and flue would probably out macro me, but I don't know if anyone here could beat my PvP, and I still feel pretty solid about my PvT. my 1v1 is really rusty though, playing way too much dota.

11/26/2010 8:41:53 PM

Just finished the campaign and went to try multiplayer. My line of thinking: I'm a smart guy who's played lots of Warcraft/Starcraft over the last 15 years. Never competitively, but capably. I've seen expert videos too. I should be able to trounce whatever n00b they pair me with.

Placement game 1: Didn't click on minerals right, got supply blocked, tried to go 2 gateways + 1 robotics facility, only had 3 zealots when 4 zealots and 2 stalkers came crashing in.

Confidence shattered. I'm too old for this.

Placement game 2: Found an actual new player. My mass stalker overwhelmed his mass marine.

Yay.

11/26/2010 9:00:20 PM

I'm in for the tournament, FLuE.301 is my name/code.

11/27/2010 10:08:05 AM

^^^ I mean if you knew my speedling build was coming it wouldn't be hard to beat me

^^ Don't worry, I did the same thing. I've played tons of different RTS's pretty much since I started with computer games forever ago and figured I would be great at it. I had romped the campaign, had watched husky and hd's videos on youtube... I thought I would be good. And then I got dominated in my placement. But just keep playing and you will get better, I really don't think I'm very good at the game but I'm a relatively high diamond, it just takes practice. Also at the start you are gonna be getting placed against random people, you'll even out eventually and start playing people around your level, then you will be able to get better. I stayed in silver for a super long time before at some point everything just sort of started clicking and I started winning like 90% of my matches until I hit the point where I'm at now.


In regards to the tournament, once we have a solid amount of people then we can set something up. I think it would be most fun to maybe do pool play to establish a ladder, then do a double elimination tourney. I mean it might take us a couple weeks to get all the matches in but it would be fun, and we could post all the replays here and what not.

11/27/2010 11:16:05 AM

i'll make sure i'll ref a game where you use it again before any matchup so i can study it and learn how to deal with it

maybe, a solid choke with +1 dts?

[Edited on November 27, 2010 at 3:57 PM. Reason : dsf]

11/27/2010 3:57:05 PM

Nothing makes me happier then protoss going fast dts

11/27/2010 9:26:52 PM

the G,G,G chorus in the video was awesome. hahaha

11/27/2010 11:37:58 PM

Moved some things around in my room today and when I moved my computer to the other side of the room it quit working. I looked inside and there was a plug not in but couldn't figure out where it went. Needless to say on my older crappy computer at the moment, but won my first round game in the weekly tournament i usually lose in the first round of.

The guy raged, it was pretty funny. Need to figure out how to fix the computer though, probably have to bring it somewhere.

11/28/2010 8:43:37 PM

So to speed up my win farming I decided to just sack my 1v1 and go all the way to bronze It took 50 straight losses to go from #2 2k diamond to bronze. Having fun in bronze now though - I've been doing the zerg 12 drone rush (double extractor trick then immediately go) and its hilarious. People get sooo pissed off. I did it for a couple hours and went like 20-3 or so. Of course I had to follow up those wins with auto losses, so some people got free wins to balance out the rage.

It will be fun to have to go from bronze back up to diamond again though.

11/29/2010 4:04:25 PM

dzags, do you ever use the zerg extractor oversupply trick in your builds? I'm wondering how worthwhile it is.

11/29/2010 4:53:26 PM

It has been shown that the extractor trick for a normal long term build(like 14 hatch, or pool in that range) isn't beneficial. The best option is 9 OL, and then drones from there(vs. 10 OL, or extractor trick).

However, there are some builds floating around that have mostly come to light because of the build order programs that people have developed where the extractor trick is actually faster. The most common is the 7RR build where you do the extractor trick and get a pool at like 12(I think?). For that particular build it is more beneficial because of the early pool.

So long story short, unless you are doing some sort of rush build w/ lings or roaches it isn't more economical. Or if you are being a jerk like Zags and 12 drone rushing noobs ;P

11/29/2010 4:58:02 PM

7RR is
10 extractor trick to 11
11 overlord
11 pool
15 extractor (put 3 on as soon as done)
16 queen (spit as soon as she's out)
18 overlord
18 roach warren
17 overlord (no more drones)

the extractor trick is absolutely necessary on this build or your timings will be way off

11/29/2010 5:27:37 PM

No I dont use the extractor trick unless I'm 12 drone rushing bronze/silver noobs . It is very effective and hilarious there though.

Typically my standard build is !4 gas/14 pool, sometimes 9 pool sling rush (2v2s and zvz). Occasionally ill 15 hatch 15 pool. Im fooling around with a 10 overpool into a fast queen/lair with an xpo at 16. Against terran its safer and almost as economical as 15 hatch/14 pool and against toss the latest trend seems to be fast void rays with gateway units so hydras are a must.

11/29/2010 7:00:46 PM

just went 24-1-16 in a game of dota as stalker. it could have been much worse too.

at the end of the game i had 10K+ i couldn't do anything with.

12/1/2010 12:09:42 AM

Stalker is OP!

Jinro is in the top 8 of GSL, that would be huge for foreigners if he makes the ro4. Too bad he isn't american though.

Also, in regards to the extractor trick being used viably. There is a new build floating around going 11 pool with an extractor trick -> 18 hatch. Its more economical then going 10 pool->16 hatch and offers a little more flexibility. I've tested it out in a couple games (granted against bronze people so more just testing the timings) and it works great.

12/3/2010 6:55:21 PM

TL is reporting from the Italian BNet forums: Blizz is on schedule to release a major patch before the end of December including:
- Chat channels
- Minor balance tweaks
- An "unannounced" upgrade ("mentioned on the forums, but not specifically confirmed by Blizz")
The unannounced feature will NOT be clan support, but they're still working on that.

The letters "LAN" appeared in my mind as I read this news.....I can dream I guess.... I'm excited for this patch!

12/3/2010 8:39:35 PM

I believe this is what you're talking about: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/1213111662

12/3/2010 8:59:58 PM

WOW....good call. Got some reading to do!

12/3/2010 9:01:38 PM

Quote :

"Fungal Growth no longer affects air units."

12/3/2010 9:31:44 PM

Is that a joke? I'm sorry, this patch is fucking ridiculous. Not only do phoenix get a big buff but they are now basically only countered by hydras?

Awesome. Every toss should open 2 stargate against zerg and enjoy.

Okay just read that this is apparently on a test region first. Really good that they are doing that. And hopefully the change won't be made permanent. If this is the case then zerg are going to need a big AA buff at some point in the future. Every ZvZ is going to be completely dumbed down to to muta v muta or hydra v muta since infestors will have no room to counter mutas. Tosses will phoenix harass to no end, drop ships will be able to get in and out safer... I just dont understand it. Why is it storm can hit everything?

Also sorta bummed out about dropping to bronze now If I had stayed in diamond i would be in the new master league if it really is top 5% as is speculated.
[Edited on December 3, 2010 at 9:58 PM. Reason : a]

[Edited on December 3, 2010 at 10:01 PM. Reason : a]

12/3/2010 9:56:10 PM

Um... Pheonix play already owns Zerg players now they are going to take 10 sec less plus no fungal?

Basically means that if macroed right in theory Zerg will never be able to kill one.

Toss stargate units are already stronger than people think they just refuse to use them.
Guess they will now... How about a marauder nerf?

12/3/2010 11:47:03 PM

multiple queens = he has to have a shitload of phoenix to drone harass. by the time he gets that I'm sure you can get a spore crawler and completely seal it. I think one queen requires 3 phoenix to lift and kill, 4 is usually safe. two queens you need like 6 or 7 to not take losses. spend that extra little bit for defense, use it to spread creep and get a better ground army than he'll have.

also corrupters in decent number will lol mass phoenix to death

phoenix are already weak, not sure if that's the way they should be buffed to become viable, I'd like if they could do well... anything vs. vikings haha. only good toss "counter" to vikings is blink stalkers! which of course get roflstomped by terran tier 1. the weakness of phoenix makes for less creative protoss play.

protoss get to trade speedrays for VRs with viability vs. carriers/bcs. also no more pylon blocking ramps!

I don't like the infestor change though. it was lolol to see fungal growths on medivacs and mutas (it's not like protoss actually use air units )

i said a long time ago the two things i want as protoss(other than stalkers to counter everything) is a marauder nerf and a phoenix buff. I think hallucination could result in some creative tactics, and i don't mind the sale on obs at all, but I'd like phoenix to be better against mass muta, and viable against vikings. It'd also be interesting if toss air didn't sack ground army power so much that they could work as well as viking mmm against colossi.


[Edited on December 4, 2010 at 2:33 AM. Reason : sadf]

12/4/2010 2:22:33 AM

Except it now means that we are going to have to build 3-4 queens at each hatch any time we see stargates. We shouldn't have to be limited to one unit. And considering the phoenix build faster then a queen, and are relatively cheap... they are going to be ridiculous harass.

12/4/2010 6:18:12 AM

Yeah I mean once you get a bunch of spores up and some hydras and queens you'll be ok... to some extent.

But there is a window right around when the phoenix harass starts that your making hydras and they are able to start picking off hydras 1 by 1 with lift and it is very annoying. Hydras are so fragile as is, phoenix take them out pretty fast.

If anything I'd rather see them change it so fungal worked like ensnar from BW a bit. It just slowed units down but they could still move. Maybe they should change it so that units are still able to move when fungal but at half speed or something. I dunno, I didn't see it as something that was broken.

Also the change so that you can't hold down a button to make units is the worst part of the patch.

12/4/2010 3:16:32 PM