day9 is so fucking funny

...

that "day9 made me do it"

holy shit...

[Edited on January 19, 2011 at 2:26 PM. Reason : ...]

1/19/2011 2:10:59 PM

Haven't watched a day9 daily in some time.

Need to watch the last few since people have said they are good.

Zags and I are on a march to being the greatest 2v2 team in the world. Well... we got a ways to go but getting up there. We don't lose very often at this point, and the build we use generally makes people rage which is pretty sweet.

1/19/2011 5:25:04 PM

I think i told zags already and i meant to tell you, but watch day9's new zvz. it'll give you something new to play around with. looks fun and strong

1/19/2011 5:33:34 PM

Got it I'll take a look.

Although anything "new" he does means everyone will be doing it so at the least need to watch to figure out what I'll be seeing over the next 2 weeks.

1/19/2011 5:56:02 PM

it's nothing revolutionary, but it deals with ling/baneling openings well, and allows you do take advantage in the mid-game with lair tech.

1/19/2011 6:20:25 PM

pretty similar to what I do already for the most part.

did like the building placement, that was good. interesting to see him actually play.

1/19/2011 11:35:00 PM

Haha. Playing a 2v2 with Titans78 this morning and we do our normal ling strat vs a zerg/protoss team. We take out the zerg and the toss is going mass zealot, so I go blings and titans stays lings. We rape his initial push of like 15 zealots a couple stalkers and a sentry then fall back to start macroing hard. I have like 12 blings, two bases and I'm getting ready to pop like 15 mutas when my spire is done, and then titans78 says "DTs!". I quickly start morphing an overseer as I see 5-6 dt's running into my base... of course the guy has them on attack move so as I'm following them with my banelings they eventually turn and start attacking them.

"GJ."

And he leaves the game.

Hahahaa.

1/20/2011 9:42:30 AM

I lost in the most annoying way yesterday. I'm playing against a Protoss and fast expand as usual when I see he's got nothing but a Forge popping up. He starts popping up cannons around my natural, but they can't hit anything since I've actually got my creep spread decently. Though I normally go Roach/Hydra I decide that I'll just get some mutas, rape his mineral line and that'll be it.

While my Spire is finishing though, in come like 6 Phoenix which rape my queens and my Mutas which had just popped. I'm eventually about to get some Hydras and spore colonies, so I'm fine, but he's raped my expansion and pretty much has complete map control. I get off a few good nyduses into his main, but eventually lose.

This went on for like 30 minutes. It was just frustrating as all hell.

1/20/2011 10:54:09 AM

Yeah I feel like all the recent patch did was make ZvP feel like ZvT where you just aren't sure what the hell is going to come at you.

They keep finding more and more ways to allow the other races to open up the game, yet are doing nothing to help zerg players handle it, or change up their own openings.

Every game I play now I go through the same thing, and it use to not be nearly as bad vs. Toss but now it is the same for Toss and Terran. Zerg have pretty much no just safe openings anymore, at least ones that don't put you so far behind you can't recover. Gets pretty exhausting..

My list :

1 - Make sure I don't get bunkered/cannoned. Have to not only watch my ramp but around my base. Even when vigilant I still get bunkered and cannoned. I lose if I mess up defending this early crap.
2 - Somehow try to secure my expansion. At this point need to decide if I need spines, lings, or can drone. I lose if I make the wrong decision, drone when I need units, or make units when I could have made drones.
3 - Somewhat secured the expand. What the hell should I make now. Is he going air, is it mass ground, is he just expanding and massing? Should I pressure? Is it a one base all in for him? I lose if I pick the wrong unit composition. Use to just be get roaches to stop the 4 gate vs. Toss. Now have to account for the phoenix play, since 3 can pop out super fast and basically decimate your economy just like early banshee.
4 - I've somehow lived to the 10 min mark. Can I expand and take a 3rd? Will I be able to defend it? Can I tech to tier 3? If you go tier 3 to early or take a 3rd when you needed units and don't that going you lose.

I feel like I'm doing one of those "choose your own adventure" books from when I was a kid, and when I have to choose which page to go to 70% of the pages I can turn to go "you chose wrong you lose.." and the other 30% are like "you have survived, now pick again..."

Meanwhile I feel like when I play P and T against zerg have a list like ...
1A - Slow zerg expansion. Either cannon/bunker which will hardly set me back at all, or just put a pylon/half built engineering bay at his expand.
1B - Block ramp w/ buildings or sentry. Don't have to worry about early pressure or being scouted. Can do whatever I want.
2 - Do I want to win with 1 base, or have fun and expand. While I'm deciding I'll make helions/banshee/phoenix and drive the zerg player crazy for a few minutes.
3 - Doesn't matter what I make, just make a lot of it and go win.

/rant.

1/20/2011 12:57:24 PM

One thing I've realized with terran is there is almost no point in harassing. I've found its much better to basically just try to keep him on 1/2 bases while you expand and spread creep to eventually get good positioning to knock out his army when he pushes. There is no point, you can swoop in with 15 mutas and rape his scvs but 1 minute later he will have them all back with almost no hit to his econ because of mules. And all those mutas will be useless when you have to actually fight him off because marines rape mutas and without micro thors rape mutas.

And yes, ZvP has become the same thing as ZvT, as in what will come next out of 100 possibilities.

1/20/2011 8:34:44 PM

Disclaimer: I don't know very much about zerg other than what you can possibly do when i scout, and what i should do as protoss(my PvZ logic is all very good thanks to day9 showing me things, and watching a lot of nony/huk/mc/protoss heros), and yall two have been how bad my terran is, just know my zerg is worse.

I would be a super macro zerg. I'd focus on getting good map vision/control, staying one base up if i could, or at LEAST being even (although zerg is probably at a slight disadvantage in the current mindset of the game when you're both on one/two bases). I'd try to keep a decent eye on the possibilities they can do and make a decent guess (protoss, at least for me, is stupidly easy to read if you can get sight of their core structures. ie: 4/5 gate means aggression or he loses, 3 gate means that you can be aggressive, but most protoss use it to expand safely, 1 gate means check for wonky shit, otherwise one of you will lose quickly, terran, while a little more difficult at times, you can at least get the general idea of ie: if he's going destiny cloudfist, expect banshee play or early drops. multiple factories means mech play.

the biggest arsenal that a zerg has is the "300 food push." I'd get a good mix of roaches and maybe an infestor or three for defense, add some slings and blings when I wanted to be aggressive or need them, get to that 200/200 and hopefully have at least my 1/1 ups on my slings by then, then 300 food push while taking what is probably a 4th (3rd if I haven't been able to for whatever reason)

1/21/2011 2:05:27 AM

^The problem is that isn't how you would play as zerg - thats basically the only way to play as zerg. Sure you can one base and grab some cheap wins here and there with baneling busts, but the only real way to play zerg is just like you described. We cannot in any way force our opponent to adapt, we have to adapt to them with the exception of very late game.

1/21/2011 8:22:05 AM

Zerg is by far the worst race. You guys know that by now.

1/21/2011 10:56:28 AM

I wish I wasn't god awful as Terran.

Like, if there's a level below Bronze, I'd be that as Terran.

1/21/2011 11:00:11 AM

There are like 2 strats I can do at maybe silver level as terran. 6 rax and blue flame drop (seeing as how basically no protoss uses drops I have no experience outside of fucking around)

Zerg I have absolutely no idea how to spend my money fast enough. I'm too good at getting the econ, not good enough at getting a TON of shit.

1/21/2011 11:35:41 AM

And what you typed out in theory sounds great for zerg.... Trouble is making it to that point.

It is one of those easier said then done type deals. For one, every terran is doing the 2 rax marine push and it is easy to execute takes no skill. If you don't defend it exactly right, you are either way behind, you lose your expansion, or you just flat out lose the game. This guy last night I played in a game was like "you overreacted to my marines and bunkers." I'm like dude you were building 3 bunkers, had 4 scvs, and 8 marines. You have to take it serious of you can just lose the game there. I end up making 2 spines, and like 14 lings. He just sells the bunkers, and leaves taking the marines with basically 0 loss. Now he has a good marine army, an expansion, and I'm 7 drones behind and instead have 14 lings twiddling their thumbs. If I only made 1 spine, 6 lings, and drones he doesn't sell the bunkers and probably takes out my expansion.

There was a nice window of about 3-4 weeks after the roach range patch where terran didn't think they could pressure zerg early and the game was actually fun. Now ... not even enjoyable.

Talking with Zags I think we are both at the point of just opening up every game with like 4 spine crawlers, and 6 queens. Only safe opening I can come up with that can deal with everything.

We get our revenge in the 2v2 games though. We are up to 2100 points and are like 31-4 in our last 35 games.

1/21/2011 12:50:55 PM

either bunkers shouldn't be free, or zerg/toss should get some sort of free offense/defense structure like that

1/21/2011 1:24:20 PM

Should just get 50% of it back.

1/21/2011 1:45:32 PM

i wonder how pissed terrans would be if you couldn't recycle bunkers, and the other guy could hop in and use it.

1/21/2011 2:06:58 PM

Quote :

"He just sells the bunkers, and leaves taking the marines with basically 0 loss. "

That right there is the problem. The terran builds three bunkers which you cannot kill without investing heavily in. If you don't invest heavily in killing them then you can't take your natural. Meanwhile he can go 2 rax -> xpo and soars ahead because mules are ridiculous. Meanwhile if he misses a few mules while hes building the bunkers then its np, he can just spam them later. However if you miss even one inject while trying to micro your lings against his bunkers you are pretty much fucked.

Quote :

"Talking with Zags I think we are both at the point of just opening up every game with like 4 spine crawlers, and 6 queens. "

Been testing a build that is basically 14 hatch, 15 pool, 23 hatch (in base at top of ramp) along with like 6 queens. It has been pretty effective as you are putting minimal larvae into lings to defend and the queens are useful all game. I still need to polish it and play more with it.

Quote :

"We get our revenge in the 2v2 games though. We are up to 2100 points and are like 31-4 in our last 35 games."

We are up to #334 in the region, #1031 worldwide (close to cracking top 1k!). We routinely go on 10 game winning streaks. It is pretty ridiculous how good we have gotten at 2v2's and adapting as we go from the same basic strat every time.

1/21/2011 9:03:41 PM

Zerg is the worst race. You guys know that by now.


What is the definition of insanity??

1/22/2011 10:33:26 AM

I don't know that zerg is the worst race. The game goes in cycles. A while ago it seemed at high levels you just couldn't beat a fruitdealer/nestea/even an idra and zerg was imba. It also seemed like protoss had to play perfectly to win, and no toss could play close to perfect. then a lot of really good protoss builds were figured out (nony's 38 probe 6gate, FFE builds became viable again, and some of them are REALLY powerful)

and then terran's always really powerful thanks to marauders, marines, medivacs and mules.

1/22/2011 1:46:17 PM

It has been a cycle ... sorta.

There was a brief time after the first patch where zerg had Terran's number but that was short lived.

Terran has been pretty dominant the entire span of the game and never really completely down.

Toss has mostly been in the middle, down at times up at others but overall Toss is the race that has played zerg and terran 50/50, while the TvZ matchup has been all over the map but mostly in Terran favor.

At the end of the day I don't think anything will change till the expansions. Simply Toss and Terran just have more units, more options, more upgrades than Zerg. Zerg to me feels very incomplete. Toss feels a little more complete but still lacking, and Terran feels much more polished overall.

With that said Zags went on a nice 4 game run last night in a King of the Hill I somehow ended up running. He played some entertaining games with cracklings, Ultras, tons of queens, etc. Maybe he will reinvent Zerg and save the race.

1/22/2011 4:43:21 PM

Anyone interested in doing a team-monobattle?

1/23/2011 9:41:29 PM

The problem with zerg is not that they are the worst race, they can be the best race in the right situations. However against terran I think they are severely outmatched and it takes perfect play for a zerg to beat a terran of equal skill. And when I say perfect play I mean perfect scouting, perfect reactions, perfect unit composition.

As for zerg vs protoss I think the zerg is a little more even but the toss can still put out some timing pushes that are just so nasty if not fully scouted.

The main issue is just that the zerg is 100% dependent on scouting, yet they arent great at it. Sure we can see what ISN'T going on on the map, but considering the shit ton of 1 base play it is difficult to see what kind of push is coming. And the zerg don't really have that composition of units that can just work against everything, they really have to have units that counter the opponent or they are going to get smashed.



Anyways, on an lol note - in the latest funday monday there is an epic 44 probe nuke. Hilarious.

1/25/2011 8:37:37 AM

I should replay this game after a long break. I'm sure its just mostly hardcore nerds and asians left who play this.

1/25/2011 8:46:27 AM

Not really, I'm neither a hardcore nerd or asian.

1/25/2011 8:49:31 AM

YOU LIE!

1/25/2011 9:07:42 AM

Haha I won't deny I'm a nerd, I mean I play starcraft. But I'm by no means a hardcore nerd, I'm just a gamer who grew up enjoying real time strategy games

1/25/2011 9:21:43 AM

Because of all the different types of games you can play on SC the game has a pretty wide ranging group of people that play. I have friends who I'd never thought would play computer games, outside of like a CoD and they play SC2 and was surprised to find that out.

With chat channels in now it is pretty evident there are plenty of non-nerdy non-asian people playing the game.

1/25/2011 9:34:19 AM

ha while i was playing sunday with some randoms from a chat channel we were discussing the playoff games that were happening in real time. is that your average nerd?

1/25/2011 12:53:12 PM

Never bought until now because I didn't enjoy the beta, but apparently a lot of people at State play it. What race would you guys recommend? I play Zerg in BW, Protoss occasionally.

[Edited on January 25, 2011 at 2:38 PM. Reason : .]

1/25/2011 2:38:26 PM

^you'll really have to just play and pick for yourself man, everyone has a different race and reason why they use them. I played zerg in the old starcraft and stuck with them in this version. personally, i like them because i enjoy massing lots of cheap units and they are the most challenging to play.

1/25/2011 2:43:05 PM

Quote :

"Anyways, on an lol note - in the latest funday monday there is an epic 44 probe nuke. Hilarious."

"Sometimes when I watch these replays, I'm just like 'fuck you guys'"

1/25/2011 4:34:13 PM

So it is looking like more ncsu people are getting active. We should make an attempt again at having an NCSU tourney. Do it bo3, give everyone a couple days to play each round, etc. Who would be up for it? Would be fun to get like 16 people at least. If you know any non tww people who would play too let us know.

1/25/2011 4:49:23 PM

I know a few non-TWW people that play, but they might not want to play in a tournament. Also, I checked CSL for the first time in forever, and wow, our team is awful.

1/25/2011 5:14:31 PM

Yeah looks like our SC2 team falls in line with most of our athletic teams at state which is good to see. Texas schools bringing the SC2 skills.. and is there anything UF isn't good at? I should have gone there. Hot women, good weather, and SC2. Although I guess if your on the SC2 team you're probably not enjoying the first 2 things very much.

With that said the NCSU roster is pretty big, so maybe some would be interested in a tournament. Not sure how else you'd get word out around campus, maybe just message the person in charge of the collegiate team and go from there.

1/25/2011 6:35:47 PM

put me on the list..i'd be down with a little tourney action

1/25/2011 6:35:56 PM

I stopped playing the second the guy fucked up Colonial Wars. It was perfect around the 1.51 iteration but once it was 1.6, it was stupid. And I over played a lot of the other "good" custom games then, but it's been months, surely there's some nice new fun ones out?

1/25/2011 6:40:21 PM

sotis is probably the best custom game out right now. it killed my desire to play 1v1. i still do teams everynow and then when zags/titans is on (and while my play is sloppy, it's usually not that bad since I have decent hand speed, know what i should be doing, and have the strong knowledge of the game)

if yall do a tourney i might have to pull a [insert GSL reference here] and come out of no where the second time around.

1/25/2011 6:57:49 PM

I mean I would just want to do a casual tournament, just for fun. To avoid cluttering up the board just shoot me a PM if you want to participate or if you know of others that do, once we get enough responses I'll throw up some rules and the brackets.

1/25/2011 8:40:08 PM

If I end up playing, I might have to pull an IdrA and act like a whiny kid.

1/25/2011 10:22:10 PM

I'm in. and on a horrible losing streak, so seed me last.

1/25/2011 10:57:10 PM

For a while I was really struggling in ZvZ matches, then I got absolutely raped by this kid who did early mass Zergling with +1 attack.

It is awesome.

1/27/2011 6:46:38 PM

Was it zags? he loves the +1 ling builds.

1/27/2011 6:53:45 PM

I don't think so, I'm still a lowly silver player. They're starting to put me against golds 1v1 though, so that's a nice change of pace!

1/27/2011 8:21:28 PM

i'm smurfing as a zerg and stealing zags' builds

1/27/2011 8:36:09 PM

so easy to underestimate the difference +1 makes for lings.

1/27/2011 10:04:52 PM

I need to work on my build it's effective, but I find there's a huge lull between when my pool finishes and when I actually have 14 gas. Right now I'm going 14 pool/14 gas. Regarding that, a question: when you go 14 gas/14 pol, do you usually hit 14 take that drone and build the extractor then wait to have 200 minerals for the pool or do you wait until you've got the 200 and just build the gas first?

I got promoted to 1v1 Gold. Considering I'm still terrible, things are looking up!

1/29/2011 1:00:54 AM

There is really no exact right answer.

My 2 openings are as follows - Vs. Toss I'm doing what your describing.

I'll make an OL at 9, drone to 14, and usually when the 14th drone pops I can send it right to make the pool. I then save 50, build my 14th drone, and pull a drone off minerals to make my gas since you'll have 25 minerals pretty instantly(be at 13/18 at that point). I'll then drone to 16 and make my expansion hatch with the 16th drone(usually have to wait a few seconds for 300 minerals) and then I'll make a queen with the next 150. Should be 17/18 at that point, make an OL and 2 lings to scout, upgrade your ling speed when you have 100 gas, pull all drones off gas at that point and mine. Start a 2nd queen when the first finishes, I'll inject with the first queen, build a tumor with the first queen, then move it to the expand. 2nd queen stays at the main base. This is all assuming you didn't get a pylon built at your expand then the order changes because you'll make lings first. Then just play from there based on what you saw scouting.

Vs. Terran you should be going 14 or 15 hatch expansion, followed by 14 or 15 pool(any combination of that is fine). I usually get gas pretty quick to either get faster roach or ling speed, usually at 15 I'll get gas. With this build you'll make a queen at each hatchery. But I wouldn't 14 pool/14 gas vs. a terran, don't really need to you can get your expansion sooner and gas after that.

Either build I'll usually make at least 1 spine at the expansion.

Zags will do some funky builds more than me with the overpool going 11pool/18 expand. I don't do that build much, but he can probably tell you the timings on that if you want a build that gets you a fast pool.

Also not sure what you mean by you having a pool finishing and a lull? You shouldn't be waiting for your pool to finish you should build the pool, with the next drone build the gas, and then keep making drones/overlord till your pool finishes and then make your queens. Unless I'm not understanding what you mean.

1/29/2011 5:10:28 PM