Starcraft 2 : The Dune II Clone

[Koa]

It's annoying when you think you have a good theory background from watching a year and a half of GSL, as well as a year's ladder practice, and you realise you still suck.

That reminds me of someone I played a little while ago, a master league zerg. After watching him play a few games I identified that he only knew how to macro up to 5 bases and do a hive tech attack. It's generally what you see pros do, and he apparently got master league that way, but his mechanics were terrible. He was winning and trash talking, so I figured I'd metagame him pretty hard. I challenged him and chose random mostly because I knew I could win as any race, but also because I thought it'd mess with his build a little.

If I got T I was going to get banshees then hellions to throw him off his macro mode, then expand and do a big thor push. You have to have really good mechanics to come out ahead on the harassment, and if you don't then the thors kill you. Either way it's definitely not a typical macro game.
If I got P I would FFE into ridiculous amounts of DT with a warp prism a little later. Again, you have to defend with strong mechanics and then do an all-in once you stabilise (which I knew he wasn't going to be inclined to do, because no hive tech).
If I got Z I'd ling/bling. I figured I could simply outmicro him to get a lead and win the game from there.

Anyway, I got P. I followed my plan, and he did the typical response to my FFE, which is to double expand and prepare for warpgate pressure at around 8 mins. I move out to fake warpgate pressure, exactly what he was expecting, and he meets me with a larger force of roaches. I lose some units and back out, and then he notices the 4 DTs attacking his lair. "so total garbage." The DTs barely kill his lair before he gets detection, but during all that there's a 5th DT in his third killing drones. Once he gets detection he moves his whole army to his third to kill the DT, exactly like I expected.

My gateway army is already in position outside his natural and I FF off the third. He has no way to defend his nat and he loses some drones, ovies, and queens. I probably could have ended the game there if I weren't so bad with protoss, but he cleaned it up and went back into macro mode. My warp prism finishes and I warp 12 zealots into his main and kill off some tech while more DTs are at his third killing some more drones. After he defends all that he goes after my third with his roaches but I had plenty to defend, so I finish off his main with my warp prism.

Anyway, I went up to 5 base and he was doing 3 base hive because I wouldn't let him expand and that's all he knew how to play. He had a handful of roaches and about 6 brood lords. My carrier fleet didn't care. "just need basic brain to win toss lol what a joke" and he alt+f4s.
I guess the moral of the story is that copying what the pros do does not equate to skill, even if you get to master league doing it.

[mike-l]

It's annoying when you think you have a good theory background from watching a year and a half of GSL, as well as a year's ladder practice, and you realise you still suck.

Along the same lines, there's a huge difference between knowing what to do and doing it. This game has a multitasking requirement well beyond the level of any other game I play. I won't make any claims to having any kind of top class theory, but I can say that even while playing, I can say to myself 'I need to do X/Y/Z' but have a lot of trouble doing it all at once.

[Yakk]

Yep -- I remember playing SC1, even with crap theory (I thought fast zealots->carriers was a kick-ass transition), I was a wonder with being able to do multiple things at once. Have an attack going on, expanding, teching and switching up my build. I'd know when something was going to be done before it happened.

I'm nowhere near as good at SC2. Or maybe my standards are too high now.

[mike-l]

Eep, Season 5 lock happens in 3 days, I really hope I can get out of gold by then, I don't want my league history to be Diamond/None/None/None/Gold

[Game_boy]

Eep, Season 5 lock happens in 3 days, I really hope I can get out of gold by then, I don't want my league history to be Diamond/None/None/None/Gold

There's a table on the Blizzard website of how many points you need by the new season date to be almost guaranteed a promotion.

[Will]

Did everyone decide to reroll Protoss or something? Because I've played eight games today, and of those, six have been vs. Protoss.

[Adacore]

You'd expect that distribution to occur (at least 6 protoss out of 8 games) about 2% of the time. If you expand it to any race, you'd expect at least 6 games against the same race to occur about 6% of the time, or about once every 17 sessions (assuming every session is 8 games).

Assuming I've done the stats right, which I probably haven't - I'm terrible at stats.

Anyway, I installed Starcraft 2 on Saturday - I've watched it for a year or so, but never played before. I really shouldn't have put the campaign on normal though, because it's been so easy (although I'm only about half way through I think). I'm on a European version, because I thought it'd be useful to have the English language version to start off with, but if I start playing seriously I'll probably switch over to the Korean version, and hope my Korean Alien Registration Number is accepted as a Korean National ID Number for location confirmation purposes.

[Game_boy]

Anyway, I installed Starcraft 2 on Saturday - I've watched it for a year or so, but never played before. I really shouldn't have put the campaign on normal though, because it's been so easy (although I'm only about half way through I think).

You can change campaign difficulty in the options.

Lag from Europe to Korea is said to be unplayable. Where are you in the world?

[Yakk]

Bah, who doesn't want to play Protoss? They have force-shields, man! Force-shields!

(Who cares that said shields just result in an army that is nearly universally only slightly over-tough for their cost, yet massively under-damaging for their cost. Force-shields!)

(Zealots have 150 HP and 2/3 of a point of armor (average) at 100 minerals. Even assuming an average attack damage of 6 giving them a 12.5% effective HP boost, that is 1.6875 HP/mineral and 0.133 DPS/mineral. Zerlings have 1.4 HP/mineral and 0.288 DPS/mineral -- Zealots have 20% more toughness in exchange for less than half the DPS/mineral. Marines have 0.9 HP/mineral and 0.14 DPS/mineral with range attacks. Stalkers, with half a point of armor, have ~175 effective HP and 6.9 DPS. At a cheap 2 gas:1 mineral ratio, that makes them 0.78 HP/mineral equiv. and 0.031 DPS/mineral (!) equiv. Protoss gets DT/Cannon cheese (Effective plat-diamond and silver-gold league at the MP level, as your allies can make up for the holes in the strategy), sEntry force field (main early game advantage), psi storm (splash), and colossi (splash) going for it, and a modestly increased resistance to splash damage attacks.)

As an aside, 4 player cannon rushes are ridiculously funny in multiplayer. Nobody, I mean nobody, expects it. They spot a cannon rush, and go and counter it because they assume that's it -- and then the other 3 hit. Maybe two-three get through and wipe out the players in question, with the stopped cannonrush players switching over to gateway tech rapidly. Triple rush with one person going early T1 units (of whatever race) also works well (the gateway rush comes knocking at their front door at about the time they have units to counter the cannon rush, causing the enemy to either let the rush succeed or turn around and turn the T1 unit attack -- if they have managed to keep their heads and produce enough T1 units while microing cannon-rush defence.)

[Game_boy]

Stalkers are even more terrible for cost than I thought.

[Yakk]

Stalkers are "good" in that Protoss doesn't have any better of a ground anti-air unit. (Well, and blink, faster speed than most enemy range attack units, relatively long range on the attack for a T1/2 unit, simply rocks -- which is why Stalkers can beat Marines). But all of those things require significant micro to exploit.

This is why mass mutalisks can destroy protoss who doesn't build their hard counter of phoenixes.

Phoenix: 18 DPS vs Muta, 250 HP, 150/100 cost -- Muta: 8.6 DPS vs Phoenix, 120 HP, 100/100 cost, much much cheaper factory. On top of this, relatively easy Phoenix micro completely destroys mutas -- longer range, fire-while moving, 13% faster speed on Phoenix. But even without that, a single Phoenix is a stand-up match for 2+ mutas, at half the gas and 3/4 the mineral cost, plus faster regeneration on shields than HP and the ability to disengage at will.

I sort of get Blizzard's position that Protoss has a serious problem at the bottom of the multiplayer game. And I've screwed up my scouting and been taken out by mass mutas before.

Muta's converged mineral cost at a "cheap" 2 minerals per gas gives them a DPS/mineral equiv of 0.029, almost as high as a Stalker. Only 0.4 HP/mineral equiv. At 3 gas:1 mineral, that's 2.2 DPS/mineral equiv and 0.3 HP/mineral equiv. But you'll note that these ridiculously fast air units are 33% to 50% as tough as a stalker (for the cost, at a deep gas discount) and 70%-90% as much damage, and upgrade better.

If the protoss player is fighting a muta all-in with an equal economy (to a zerg!), the protoss player would have had to sink half of their minerals into stalkers to win a stand-up fight. And the muta player can instead run around and hit the protoss player's economy, getting a greater and greater economic advantage (either forcing the protoss army to stay at home to defend against muta harass, surrendering the map to the zerg, or have their bases hit regularly by muta flybys, or massively over-invest in cannons (which will stop working as the number of mutas climb, unless the protoss goes really insane about it) and/or doing a hard transition to phoenix (the lowest tech unit effective against mutas), or teching to templar/psi storm and leaving templar traps at each expansion...), which can quickly reach the point where the muta army can win a stand-up fight. (Note: going archon will protect your army, but not your bases...)

[Will]

Yeah, as a protoss player, I hate mutas pretty hard. The problem with their hard counter, Phoenixes, is that it's nearly impossible to go Phoenixes as a *response* to mutas unless you already have a Stargate up. You generally have to have close to as many Phoenixes as they have mutas to come out on top, and Phoenixes are more expensive and slower to make.

I've been focusing on getting HTs with storm up relatively quickly (keep in mind I'm in the Silver league, and micro is not one of my strong points) which if used properly is a much more cost-effective way to counter mutas than Stalkers alone.

I'm also not terribly fond of the fact that Blizzard's not really trying to change this in HotS, instead making the new Muta counter a T3 unit.

[Adacore]

Anyway, I installed Starcraft 2 on Saturday - I've watched it for a year or so, but never played before. I really shouldn't have put the campaign on normal though, because it's been so easy (although I'm only about half way through I think).

You can change campaign difficulty in the options.

Lag from Europe to Korea is said to be unplayable. Where are you in the world?

I'm in Changwon, South Korea, for the next 15 months, and possibly longer. Hence why I really don't want to play on EU servers while I'm out here - I figure, as you said, it'll be unplayable. I have a Korean Alien ID Card, which is the foreigner equivalent to their National ID Card (which battlenet says you need to play on the Korean server), and I'm wondering if it'll work. The Korean server is only available in Hangul, no English, and my Korean is pretty shoddy, though.

[Yakk]

Yeah, as a protoss player, I hate mutas pretty hard. The problem with their hard counter, Phoenixes, is that it's nearly impossible to go Phoenixes as a *response* to mutas unless you already have a Stargate up. You generally have to have close to as many Phoenixes as they have mutas to come out on top, and Phoenixes are more expensive and slower to make.

Amusingly, you can usually detect muta play incoming by the zerg player staying with zerglings as a ground force.

This is annoying, because the muta counter (stalkers) sucks hard against zerglings without serious sentry support (and even then, it usually only lets you force a retreat, and you need a LOT of sentries to keep the force field generation rate up high enough to handle constant harass).

I've been focusing on getting HTs with storm up relatively quickly (keep in mind I'm in the Silver league, and micro is not one of my strong points) which if used properly is a much more cost-effective way to counter mutas than Stalkers alone.

Yep. Templars are the bomb.

I'm also not terribly fond of the fact that Blizzard's not really trying to change this in HotS, instead making the new Muta counter a T3 unit.

They are actually talking about protoss problems with mass muta pre-HotS issues.

Amusingly, by the time I hit T3, my problem tends not to be mutas, but rather the corruptor-counter to my phoenixes, and (if they win the air war) Brood Lords (which, amusingly, stalkers are a decent counter to). Void Rays are mediocre against corruptors (200 HP/8.9 DPS/150/100 (400 @ 2.5 gas/mineral -> 0.5 HP/cost, 0.022 DPS/cost) cost vs 250/150 (625 @ 2.5 gas/mineral, 0.4 HP/cost, 0.021->0.037) cost, 250 HP/13.36 DPS->23.3 DPS means that the corruptors tie cost-for-cost before the VR powers up, and the corruptor gets to disengage at will due to faster speed.

With corruptors backing up your muta force, I have to engage your mutas with phoneixes, dodge your corruptors, and either go void rays (which is a mugs game if they have any economic advantage (see above)), or switch away from air. Which wastes any and all tech investment I have made in air, means I have to build a DIFFERENT counter to mass-mutas that also handles the brood lord possibility (templars or stalkers, basically). Or I have to win the game before you can tech any further.

Phoenix is a dead end against an air zerg. A really strong counter that leads into a dead end, but a dead end nonetheless.

[Game_boy]

I thought the consensus was that Phoenixes are not a viable counter, because Protoss can't get the gas investment and production facilities to keep up with muta production despite the on paper advantage. Plus one misclick and losing ANY phoenixes means you are irreparably behind, and they can punish you very fast for that. The Phoenixes are also completely useless once the mutas are dead, Zerg would love to trade 30 mutas of resources for forcing 20 phoenixes.

Storms are good but the low leagues don't have the micro or map awareness to land them and they are super expensive on gas also.

I find blink stalkers alone are enough to beat mass mutas, I usually get 40-50 stalkers + 2-3 colossi against zerglings as a maxed composition. 2-3 cannons per base is enough to pull fire from your probes until you can blink there, the cannons aren't meant to actually win against them. The good thing is once you win the fight vs. the mutas, 50 blink stalkers are good against anything they could remax on: broods, roaches, lings as long as you have 1 colossus left.

If we both get maxed I usually base trade and hope it isn't Tal'Darim; mutas' power in a base trade is the only thing close to needing patching somehow.

[Will]

The Phoenixes are also completely useless once the mutas are dead, Zerg would love to trade 30 mutas of resources for forcing 20 phoenixes.

They're not *completely* useless--you can turn around and harass worker lines, kill queens and overlords, etc. but 5 phoenixes is as good as 20 in that regard, so your point still stands. And again, that kind of harass is very micro intensive.

[Yakk]

In theory, a 20 phoenix army can defeat a 20 hydralisk army with little losses. The problem is that the hydras where a bit more than half the price, and you require great micro to handle the hydras, and enough time to regenerate energy between engagements.

And a 40 hydra army evaporates your phoenixes. 40 hydra (4k/2k cost) vs 20 phoenix 10 zealot (4k/2k cost) ends up with a bunch of dead phoenixes and zealots.

And phoenix harrass is far easier to shut down than hydra harrass, because phoenixes can do nothing against spore colonies. (I wonder if the oracle will make a phoenix/oracle harrass brutal?)

[mike-l]

I'm finding 2 base 7 gate blink stalker all ins to be the death of me (as zerg). I've yet to beat one, though I have some new ideas to try tonight. I find I have more success with roaches against P than I do with mutas, but that just might be my terrible muta micro/complete inability to gauge my chances of winning when mutas are involved.

Was watching oGsVines last night, and he didn't lose with the aforementioned blink stalker all in once in the 8 or 9 games I saw him do it.

[Yakk]

So, FFE->7 gate blink stalkers?

To which you counter FE+extra bases for gas, mutas?

Doesn't roach run into the problem that they lose to both stalkers (early on, due to stalkers moving faster -- later, due to blink) and eventually immortals (hard) if you keep at it?

Roach is 145 HP, 4 range, 7.75 DPS against Stalker (average shield and armor) for 75/25. Base move of 2.25 (slow), upgrade to 3.0 (slightly faster than stalker).
Stalker is 160 HP, 6 range, 9.03 DPS against Roach (armored, 1 point) for 125/50. Speed is 2.95, which lets it easily kite slowroaches, and basically match the speed of fastroaches off creep.

Or, 11 roach hits to kill a stalker -- or 22 roach seconds, and 12 stalker hits to kill a roach -- or 17.28 stalker seconds. Including supply costs, they are 100/25 vs 150/50 -- stalkers cost more than 50% more, and mano-a-mano are only 27% stronger (well, 12.7% really -- you need to kill opponents 4x faster if you cost 2x as much, because you are fighting two of them, just to stay even).

Immortals, however, can take 24 roach hits (48 seconds), and kill a roach in 3 hits (4.35 seconds), for the cost of 2 stalkers (and a more expensive factory). So if the zerg player gives any indication of roach play, and has any delay for roach speed (without which, you have to use zerglings to kill enemy stalkers), the protoss player can trump hard with immortals.

With pylon costs, 300/100 vs 300/75 is 3 roaches for 1 immortal. 3+3+2+2+1+1+1 means the immortal is only 2/3 dead while the roaches are splatted.

(In practice, the protoss player will play mixed stalker/immortal against your roach, and the immortals will naturally flow towards the back of the enemy army, letting them deal damage without taking it. The immortal is only slightly better at soaking roach hits (22 hits for 2 stalkers, 24 for 1 immortal), but much better at killing roaches (4.35 immortal seconds, vs 8.64 seconds for the two stalkers), which means the roach player has to hope that the immortal is reachable, do stutter-step to reach it, then focus fire them down without wasting too much in the way of attacks. Hurm.

On the other hand, I see far too many protoss players going hard colossus instead of immortal regardless of the other side's unit composition. And roaches are about the best ground unit that zerg has to take out colossi (well, hydra escort can also help).

Then again, I'm possibly not playing at your level.

[You, sir, name?]

Been playing some SC2 again. Back to terran again. A 30 week absence dropped got me placed in bronze again.

My mechanics are so awkward. Down to like 30-50 APM.


How has the metagame shifted in TvP as of late? Protoss is the only race that's giving me trouble right now, especially in the early game. I've tried both 3rax and 1 rax FE, only to be met with wholesale slaughter of my dudes.

Lag from Europe to Korea is said to be unplayable. Where are you in the world?

I do most my work over SSH to Japan (from Sweden). I can attest to the atrocious latency of West Euro->East Asia internet connections.

[mike-l]

Specifically, the timing of this push gives you two options, 3 base with a roach/ling/spine defense, or 2 base muta defense, I like the former because it's a better spot if the all in doesn't happen. Most people on TL recommend against the muta defense as well as it's harder to execute

In general: On creep, unupgraded roaches are only minutely slower than stalkers, and on or off creep, upgraded roaches are faster. Needless to say, Glial Reconstruction is a major priority if playing roaches, especially against protoss. The slower attack rate helps in kiting fights as well, as you have to stop less often.

You've already noted that mineral cost vs mineral cost roaches are slightly ahead, but they're even further ahead if you compare equal gas cost, which is generally the limiting factor.

Roaches also upgrade far better than stalkers, their damage being 16 + 2x upgrades, while stalkers do 14 + 1x to armored, meaning at maxed out it's still 12 hits to kill the roach, while it's down to 9 hits for the roach to kill the stalker, making them almost identical, while the roach is MUCH cheaper. (Incidentally, this is true for 3/3 vs 3/3/x for any level of shields upgrade)

Burrowed movement helps vs forcefields, the insane regen with burrow helps to weather storms.

Yes, immortals own them, but then lings own immortals, and it's hard (nor do you want to) get more than a few immortals in your army (being only useful vs roaches) while it's reasonably to have 30+ roaches.

If roaches hit air, I'd probably never not build them.

[|Erasmus|]

Been playing some SC2 again. Back to terran again. A 30 week absence dropped got me placed in bronze again.

My mechanics are so awkward. Down to like 30-50 APM.


How has the metagame shifted in TvP as of late? Protoss is the only race that's giving me trouble right now, especially in the early game. I've tried both 3rax and 1 rax FE, only to be met with wholesale slaughter of my dudes.

In bronze, I wouldn't bother with things like 'metagame'. Both of those builds are fine, if map dependant. For example, 1 rax FE is still the best overall Terran build (imo) but there are some maps it's just asking to be abused by warp prism or blink stalker allins on (like shattered). If you want an opening you can do on any map, learn to 2 rax pressure expand.

[Koa]

The Phoenixes are also completely useless once the mutas are dead, Zerg would love to trade 30 mutas of resources for forcing 20 phoenixes.

That's definitely not true. The economic damage that 20 phoenixes can do can't be ignored. Zerg has to respond to them in some way.

[Adacore]

I have a Korean Alien ID Card, which is the foreigner equivalent to their National ID Card (which battlenet says you need to play on the Korean server), and I'm wondering if it'll work. The Korean server is only available in Hangul, no English, and my Korean is pretty shoddy, though.

I've done some searching, and there appear to be two possible solutions, if anyone was interested. Either I can use a government website to convert my foreigner ID number into a Korean 'g-PIN'/'i-PIN', which will allow me to register for the Korean version, or apparently I can go to a vendor and get the Taiwanese version added to my account somehow (which has an English language option and the ability to access the Korean ladders, but might involve some messing around with tech support to get around the fact I don't have a Taiwanese address).

[You, sir, name?]

Been playing some SC2 again. Back to terran again. A 30 week absence dropped got me placed in bronze again.

My mechanics are so awkward. Down to like 30-50 APM.


How has the metagame shifted in TvP as of late? Protoss is the only race that's giving me trouble right now, especially in the early game. I've tried both 3rax and 1 rax FE, only to be met with wholesale slaughter of my dudes.

In bronze, I wouldn't bother with things like 'metagame'. Both of those builds are fine, if map dependant. For example, 1 rax FE is still the best overall Terran build (imo) but there are some maps it's just asking to be abused by warp prism or blink stalker allins on (like shattered). If you want an opening you can do on any map, learn to 2 rax pressure expand.

The lower leagues definitely have a metagame. It's different from the high level metagame, sure, but it's definitely around. For example, in season 1, the build-du-jour against protoss was the 3 rax all in. It virtually never failed, as people really all the way up to gold thought sentinels sucked and went for stalkers and zealots to hold it off instead (because of their higher DPS).

[Yakk]

The Phoenixes are also completely useless once the mutas are dead, Zerg would love to trade 30 mutas of resources for forcing 20 phoenixes.

That's definitely not true. The economic damage that 20 phoenixes can do can't be ignored. Zerg has to respond to them in some way.

And 30 mutas of resources is more costly than 20 phoenixes (ignoring starports).

While phoenixes are not strong anti-ground units, they aren't completely horrible. So now you have burned about the same amount of resources as your enemy, and they have a unit that isn't completely useless left over.

Now, the protoss player might over-build and produce 20 phoenixes in response to your 10 mutas -- but given how your production abilities are superior to theirs, this probably won't happen.

On the other hand, odds are that the mutas did some damage before the phoenixes showed up. So long as you stop muta production once they counter effectively, you can come out ahead (and you plan for your enemy to counter it, so start teching along a different path once your muta tech has matured...)

[Will]

Been playing some SC2 again. Back to terran again. A 30 week absence dropped got me placed in bronze again.

My mechanics are so awkward. Down to like 30-50 APM.


How has the metagame shifted in TvP as of late? Protoss is the only race that's giving me trouble right now, especially in the early game. I've tried both 3rax and 1 rax FE, only to be met with wholesale slaughter of my dudes.

In bronze, I wouldn't bother with things like 'metagame'. Both of those builds are fine, if map dependant. For example, 1 rax FE is still the best overall Terran build (imo) but there are some maps it's just asking to be abused by warp prism or blink stalker allins on (like shattered). If you want an opening you can do on any map, learn to 2 rax pressure expand.

The lower leagues definitely have a metagame. It's different from the high level metagame, sure, but it's definitely around. For example, in season 1, the build-du-jour against protoss was the 3 rax all in. It virtually never failed, as people really all the way up to gold thought sentinels sucked and went for stalkers and zealots to hold it off instead (because of their higher DPS).

He wasn't asserting that there *is* no metagame, only that it's not worth focusing on. For me, when I was Bronze, I focused on always building probes and avoiding supply block. The day I did that, my winrate shot through the roof and I literally hit the top of my league that same day; I was promoted to Silver league almost immediately. Focusing on the metagame is meaningless when most of your opponents don't even have the basic skills of building their economy.

[Game_boy]

I forgot the other thing about phoenixes: a few infestors catching them with one fungal can kill all of them.

I'm thinking about one game in particular where Liquid'Tyler went phoenixes, did some decent damage and was even with the Zerg, then one fungal and instant loss for P, within 30s you could tell he was dead.

[mike-l]

Didn't make it to plat Oh well, next season.

Interestingly, I haven't lost a single game I played against plat opponents, though I still lose horribly to many gold players, random samples are random

I had 2 spectacular fails last night. The first was a ZvZ, I 10 pool, and my overlord hanging out behind his minerals sees no pool, so I assume hatch first. I skip the queen, build a few lings and pull everything to go kill him. I get out to my nat and see 5 spines plop down in his main. Turns out my ovie didn't have sight of where he placed his pool. Lesson learned, ovie goes right over the hatch

Second game was a ZvP, late game getting ready for a hard tech switch to broods, huge army clash decimating our supplies, I make 20 corruptors while he warps in a ton of stalkers. The corruptors hatch, select them.... oh crap, didn't upgrade to Greater Spire. The corruptors didn't help much as he savaged me.

[Yakk]

I find it quite neat that I can generate a time-specific metagame.

We play at lunch at work, and the set of people playing (at our level) (in group team games) (on our server) is relatively limited, to the point where we get the same person twice in a row more than once.

If we use a tactic or trick too often, not only do other people who are playing actually remember facing us with that tactic, but other people can start copying us and spreading that tactic around in our little microcosm. Ie, one of my teammates has a habit of hiding a pylon to warp DTs in using an allies scan/overlord. He can pull off the DTs at around the same time as a typical non-zergling rush attack hits the front of our base. He hits two probe lines at once, and if they are going for a rush tactic they almost certainly don't have detection quite yet, and are distracted by a battle going on at the enemy base...

Over time, people have started explicitly looking in his favorite spots to hide a pylon outside their base.

And as the singular of data is...

[You, sir, name?]

Was promoted to silver with like 3 hours to spare to ladder lock.

[Game_boy]

Didn't make it to plat Oh well, next season.

If you get that number of points by the 14th it should still promote you, because the MMR those points represent will still be the same and that hasn't been locked.

[You, sir, name?]

I've been playing almost exclusively random players and zerg all day long, and consequently gone up quite a lot in MMR. Now I'm starting to see gold level players. There will be hell to pay once battle net decides to put me up against normal races again.

My 1/1/oh he's playing protoss uh... maybe I'll get another rax and some hellions and a dropship? That might work? Oh, it did. Lucky me his protoss micro was awful-build is hardly going to fly against someone who actually knows the first bit about playing protoss.

[mike-l]

Didn't make it to plat Oh well, next season.

If you get that number of points by the 14th it should still promote you, because the MMR those points represent will still be the same and that hasn't been locked.

It will promote me when I start the next season. (ie if you would have been promoted you will be placed into the promoted league next season).

You can no longer be promoted or demoted this season, that's what the ladder lock is.

Anyway, I'm not too worried, I only played 5 days of games so far, and I have a lot of things I've identified as areas for improvement, so I'm optimistic about next season. And I have 2 full seasons of play before I return to unstable internet land.

[Koa]

I forgot the other thing about phoenixes: a few infestors catching them with one fungal can kill all of them.

I'm thinking about one game in particular where Liquid'Tyler went phoenixes, did some decent damage and was even with the Zerg, then one fungal and instant loss for P, within 30s you could tell he was dead.

The game on Kulas Ravine? That's the only one that I remember, but I don't remember infestors being used there. But yeah, that would be one of the responses, though one of the gamble-y ones. It takes 6 fungals to kill a phoenix, which is a scenario where all the phoenixes have to be bunched up in one spot, caught by an infestor, and realistically have 5 other infestors nearby to finish them. If the zerg only catches half of them with an infestor, it gets dicey. The zerg has to do inefficient fungals just to keep his infestors alive from the phoenixes, and he probably won't do much damage and will lose several infestors. It can often be a good idea for the zerg to take the gamble though, especially after losing 30 muta or something ridiculous. With infested terran and burrow move it's usually the best option anyway.

Corruptors are the straight-up response. It's not something a zerg wants to do if they're already behind, but it's decent otherwise to regain some map control and to stay in the game. Though corruptors are even more useless after the phoenixes are gone than the phoenixes are after the mutas are gone.

Another response you might see is heavy spore crawlers and queens, which I feel is a dead end more so than you say the phoenixes are. A zerg without map control is a terrible thing, and if he moves out to try to deny all the protoss expansions that are going up, he's going to lose a good portion of his army in transit to the phoenixes.

Then there's hydras, which is kind of an all-in response because they're so slow, expensive, and hard countered. Zerg can't just build a few of them to keep the phoenixes from doing too much damage, because the phoenixes will destroy them.

Anyway, zerg has to do one of those things otherwise they just die to mineral lines getting wiped out in seconds and overlords getting one-shotted. Definitely not useless, and losing 30 muta as Yakk said is kind of absurdly bad.

Still undecided if 'phoenix' is plural.

[Izawwlgood]

I'm realizing I really suck at this game.

Medvacs + Marines = ouch. Obviously banelings or fungal is a good counter, but there comes a point where the scale is just overwhelming.

[EdgarJPublius]

I think I lost every game tonight except this one.

Thinking of submitting it to LaGTV as a 'will cheese fail'.

[Will]

Corruptors are the straight-up response. It's not something a zerg wants to do if they're already behind, but it's decent otherwise to regain some map control and to stay in the game. Though corruptors are even more useless after the phoenixes are gone than the phoenixes are after the mutas are gone.

Corruptors are useless? I suppose, unless the Protoss goes Colossi (hint: all of them) or the Zerg wants to transition to Brood Lords (hint: most of them) in the late game.

[Izawwlgood]

I always try to have my brood lords escorted by an equal number of corruptors and an overseer. Brood lords are kind of fragile. And so slow.
Any trickses for utilizing special abilities like psi storm/fungal? I feel like the hot key is too cumbersome to use, so I tend to neglect it.

[Will]

I don't know how you have your hotkeys set up, but when I play I place my hand on the 2345 keys so I can easily hit my hotkey groups when I need them. Most of the default hotkeys aren't difficult to hit from there. And you can always change your hotkey setup, anyway.