Starcraft 2 : The Dune II Clone

[Yakk]

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.

I've been doing some fun zealot/high templar play with protoss recently, with a light scattering of archons (if/when a templar clump gets flanked by zerglings, self-psistorm and combine quickly). If I use robo, it is for observers and (sometimes) immortals.

I'll admit it is pretty quirky, but I'm having some fun with it. It probably works better in multiplayer, as the holes in it can be filled by allies.

Plus, I was getting bored by stalker/collossi all the time.

[Will]

Woo, just got matched against an honest-to-goodness gold league player (and not one destined for demotion) and though I lost, I'm hoping this will be a trend.

[Koa]

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.

I was thinking of adding in that it provides peace of mind that no more stargate or colossi will be a problem, but there's no real way that a zerg can exploit that unless the protoss mistakenly goes down that route. Zerg doesn't really benefit from knowing that there isn't (or shouldn't be) any colossi threat. I guess they can build hydra, but why would they want to?

[Will]

Coincidentally, yesterday's Day[9] daily was all about dealing with mutas in PvZ.

[You, sir, name?]

I had the most awesome supply awareness in a game today. Didn't get supply blocked until I had 3 digits of supply.
Figured I didn't need to harass or anything, because the other guy would be a loser who got supply blocked.
So I just expanded a bunch and and maxed.
So I attack.
It goes wrong.
Bad, bad engagement.
Really, I walk into a meat grinder.
I lose 90 supply, he loses 20.
I re-max, and attack his expansion instead.
I get flanked by two armies.
It's another meat grinder.
I lose my army again.
I can't remax fast enough.
I die.
I'm not even mad about TvP balance, because I had a 2000+ trust fund when I died.
D:

I started being a nazi about my supplies because I lost RO3 in SCV Rush BSG yesterday because of a stupid supply fumble completely messing up my build.

[Izawwlgood]

That metric of how many resources you have unspent at any given time always depresses me. It's like a statistical reminder of how much I suck... Next to a bunch of other statistical reminders.

[Spambot5546]

Hey, did you guys know there's IdrA slashfic? Yeah...

[Jesse]

Hey, did you guys know there's IdrA slashfic? Yeah...

Whoever wrote that completely nailed Greg.

[Game_boy]

So Phoenixes counter mutas now, debate over. Range 6 vs range 3 means phoenixes can kite forever.

I like the snipe and mule changes as well.

[Will]

Which requires a fleet beacon and an upgrade. I don't know how much that will help, overall.
I'm pretty glad to see them bring back the correct reporting of APM (though the fact that it's still actions per Blizzard Minute instead of real-world minute is still annoying).

Also, as usual, I regret reading the comments on the announcement on Blizzard's site.

[Game_boy]

Which requires a fleet beacon and an upgrade. I don't know how much that will help, overall.
I'm pretty glad to see them bring back the correct reporting of APM (though the fact that it's still actions per Blizzard Minute instead of real-world minute is still annoying).

It's to deter the existence of 40 muta balls, since much lower numbers of range-6 phoenixes will take out the mutas. To stop Zerg from making only mutas with no support.

It's not meant to be against 15-20 muta pressure.

[Izawwlgood]

Good counters for MMM as Zerg? Banelings get chewed up prior to reaching the marines (but work pretty well). And Infestors get popped right after dropping a single fungal. I was thinking of using brood lords sneakily moved in, but i wager they'd get torn apart pretty swiftly.

[You, sir, name?]

Good counters for MMM as Zerg? Banelings get chewed up prior to reaching the marines (but work pretty well). And Infestors get popped right after dropping a single fungal. I was thinking of using brood lords sneakily moved in, but i wager they'd get torn apart pretty swiftly.

Have you tried combining the aforementioned counters with speedlings to soak up some of the damage? Or better yet, playing bowling with fungalled bio as pins and a baneling as the ball?

[Izawwlgood]

Fungaled bio?
I think all speedlings will do is act as meatshields, right? Why not just have roaches for that?

[Nylonathatep]

Short Answear:

1) Infestor/ling works okay vs MMM. The ling takes the hit and also does a quick surround/ pin down the Marines/Mauraders while the Infestor Fungal from behind your ling works. Also you'll need to make more Infestor.. 1 or 2 infestors won't cut it if you try to fungal MMM.

You can use roaches for that too and in fact Roach/Infestor have lots of synergy because they both can move when burrowed and roaches are more resilant then zerglings. However Roaches are pretty gas intensive, Roaches are better in small battles mainly due to size and dps, roaches being a range unit will get in the way of infestor trying to cast fungal. Going speedling/infestor frees up a lot of gas and as long as you are on top of your injects you'll end up having more zerglings then he has Marines/Mauraders.

You can also do Ling/Bling/Infestor. Keep the Bling in seperate control group. Once you pin down the marine ball down with lings, fungal, and then rush in with Bling.

2) Zergling/Bling with Bling drops. Pin the Terran Army down with zergling, move in with Overlord loaded with blings, click on the bling inside the Overlord individually to drop them over the army.

Broodlords won't work cuz 1) MMM is tier 1.5~2... they can get a decent MMM army out around 11 minute mark with Stim... Even if you rush to Broodlord you won't be able to get it out at that time. 2) If there's no Ground coverage... Marine will just Stim in and snipe broodlords down. It's also easy for the Terran to just pump viking out of Starport with reactor in response to you going broodlords as suppose to him just making medivacs.




Longer Answear:

MMM's Mobility is overrated, especially against bronze/silver league player that just have everyone in one control group. The army gains mobility if it's loaded into the medivac for harassment. Instead leave 1 or 2 lings/changeling via overseerer to scout when his army moves out, then use an alterate path to move your lings to harass his base. You can also slow his army down by using burrow Blings long the way to your base.

In the later game use Nydus, or drop burrow Infestor/ roach to harass his mineral lines, or just use Mutas to keep harassing until you out base him and out tech him. You can trade base with him later, or just swarm him with your armies because hopefully you'll be way ahead at this point.

Or if he turtle and refuse to leave his base, leave a few burrow zerglings in expos and go for the starvation play. Send zerglings, changelings to keep scouting his forces to see if he doesn't do something desperate like BC, Mass Thors, Ghost nukes, switch to Mech, and then react accordingly.

[You, sir, name?]

Fungaled bio?
I think all speedlings will do is act as meatshields, right? Why not just have roaches for that?

Besides zero gas cost, because when you're in a bad engagement with roaches, you can simply go retreat (marauders will kite roaches indefinitely). You can't retreat from speedlings, so when the damage-dealers have done their jobs and the Terran army is at a disadvantage, the units are lost. And that sort of unit trade is to the zerg's advantage.

Of course, this is all from a Terran perspective. Zerg players may have different ideas.

[Koa]

Which requires a fleet beacon and an upgrade. I don't know how much that will help, overall.
I'm pretty glad to see them bring back the correct reporting of APM (though the fact that it's still actions per Blizzard Minute instead of real-world minute is still annoying).

Also, as usual, I regret reading the comments on the announcement on Blizzard's site.

Thoroughly agree on all points. I was kind of thinking they'd get some sort of splash ability from the fleet beacon, and even then I was wondering how useful that would be. The fleet beacon comes at a time when the muta have already served their purpose in enabling the zerg to reach hive with a strong economy.

Also: "We felt the Snipe ability was countering zerg broodlords and ultralisks slightly too well." Slightly = 45% nerf?

[Xeio]

Also: "We felt the Snipe ability was countering zerg broodlords and ultralisks slightly too well." Slightly = 45% nerf?

45% more energy, sure. And given that ghosts were generally swimming with energy anyway...

Though I wonder if this will increase usage of ultras, as it almost doubled the number of snipes for them.

[mike-l]

Also: "We felt the Snipe ability was countering zerg broodlords and ultralisks slightly too well." Slightly = 45% nerf?

45% more energy, sure. And given that ghosts were generally swimming with energy anyway...

Though I wonder if this will increase usage of ultras, as it almost doubled the number of snipes for them.

What? It's 45% less damage vs everything except templar, queens and ghosts (to which it is slightly buffed). That means you need 80% more shots to do the same damage, which is more energy as well as more time.

[omgryebread]

Also: "We felt the Snipe ability was countering zerg broodlords and ultralisks slightly too well." Slightly = 45% nerf?

45% more energy, sure. And given that ghosts were generally swimming with energy anyway...

Though I wonder if this will increase usage of ultras, as it almost doubled the number of snipes for them.

I can't imagine ultras being that commonly used until HotS at least. They just take up a stupid amount of space. Cracklings can do damage as scary as ultras, and they are easy to replenish, but in production and in them actually getting into battle.

[Spambot5546]

I was watching Psy and he was saying that he primary value of Ultras is not in damage dealing but in damage absorption. You send them in first so that the siege tanks focus on them and then swarm your lings in around everything else. This was in a video of him failing utterly to do that and thus losing a lot of engagements, so I don't know how effective it really is.

[Koa]

That's how they were in BW. Ultras could take a lot of damage, but cracklings had much higher dps. In SC2 ultras die fairly quickly and are more expensive, but they can do a lot of damage in the right position. Cracklings aren't what they used to be either. I find that preserving ultras for as long as possible is ideal, which means using lings to absorb damage.

[Game_boy]

I don't think the units' stats are much different, but the clumping makes it much harder for zerglings to get a surround, and Ultralisks don't prioritise the right targets combined with general bad pathing from being a large melee unit.

I think the automatic targeting should target a unit it will do the most HP damage to within a reasonable range. So ultralisks and to give another example immortals should shoot at tanks left unaided, and not at marines like they usually do.

[J the Ninja]

I tried archon drop harass tonight. Turns out they don't fit through the holes between mineral patches. The more you know.



(initially, i did a storm drop, which went great, killed 27 drones. Then i merged the two templar, and that was going ok, until it got killed by roaches. Later in the game, the warp prism was still alive, and I was so far ahead I decided, oh, hey, fuck it, lets make 4 templar, merge them, and shove them in the warp prism, see how this goes. They do kill queens REALLY fast though)

[Game_boy]

That Archon range buff was the best thing that ever happened to Protoss.

[You, sir, name?]

I've started doing this super-aggressive 1/1/1 strategy in TvT that I've had a ton of success with. You move out with 2 tanks, a handful of marines, a dropship and a viking. My current build is a bit rough and has me resource blocked a few times, but it's working fairly well none the less. You attack by sieging up on the back of the enemy base and elevator up the marines. You run in and snipe off tech labs with the marines and fall back to the tanks whenever they try to attack the marines.

Apparently it's frustrating as hell, as nobody ggs when I defeat them with it.

[Spambot5546]

I can't imagine a viking would be super helpful in TvT in that kind of engagement. Is it realistic to get a tech lab instead, and get a Banshee or Raven?

[You, sir, name?]

I can't imagine a viking would be super helpful in TvT in that kind of engagement. Is it realistic to get a tech lab instead, and get a Banshee or Raven?

Simply not enough gas for that. This is a really gas starved build. I get the viking because I can, and there's nothing else I can spend the money on.

It does help in some scenarios. Occasionally they're planning on going tank-viking, so have one in their base. If that happens, you can use your own viking to distract it while you unload your marines. It also shuts down drops from them.

Ravens is a good idea to tech to if they manage to hold off the initial siege, as more than one person gets the idea of evening out the score with banshees.

[Game_boy]

One viking is very helpful in TvT, it can help defend drops, banshees or hellions (instead of getting a maurader), snipe their first viking or medivac, give vision onto highground, and if nothing else scout the enemy base. It should be a part of any TvT build.

[EdgarJPublius]

I've been doing reaper harass in 2v2. On any map I can cliff-jump into the mineral line, it is hilariously effective. 6-8 reapers slaughter workers and those grenades are great for sniping pylons/supply depots/tech labs.

[You, sir, name?]

78% Win today. Feels good, man.

[You, sir, name?]

Spent some time tweaking the tank marine-elevator attack. I think I can get something like 5-6 marines, 2 tanks and a medivac by your base at the 7 minute mark. That's almost a minute earlier than before.

[Koa]

I think I lost every game tonight except this one.

Thinking of submitting it to LaGTV as a 'will cheese fail'.
Will Drone Rush Fail.zip

I thought that was going to be a simple drone rush where people then leave the game, but that was actually really funny.
Here's a description of the game:

Spoiler:

2v2, TZvTT, NmE teamed with Zephyr. NmE immediately drone rushes.

NmE "drone rush now now now"
Zephyr "no no no"
NmE "too late do it or lose"
Zephyr "fuck me"

It doesn't do much damage. NmE demands that Zephyr attack, which also doesn't work, and NmE goes full retard with rage. Eventually...

"alright fuck this im going to bed. faggggggggg"
"good, I'd do better on my own"

NmE tells the enemy team what units Zephyr has and, wrongly, that he has no expo. He leaves, and Zephyr plays the zerg better than NmE was. The opponents attack, killing all but a few of Zephyr's harvesters. Zephyr counters, and with the bank of resources NmE gave him plus better macro, he breaks through their base.
They both congratulate Zephyr on the win.

[You, sir, name?]

I've finally found a TvP strategy I don't get absolutely slaughtered with. This is today's games.

Spoiler:

Feels good, man.

[Koa]

I played a pretty amusing PvT. My planned build was a mothership rush, my opponent's planned build was to 3rax marine+scv all in. Not quite the best formula for success.

I got gas before my first gateway, which means my gateway was just finishing as he was moving down his ramp with about 8 marines and 6 scvs. I started throwing all my chronoboosts onto my gateway to get sentries out asap, and begun a second gateway. He gets up to my ramp, and my first forcefield goes down. My second sentry pops out just a second or so before the first forcefield expires, and the second forcefield goes down. My stargate finishes and I decide to get a voidray, since I had the money and just needed anything to hold his attack. My second gateway finishes another sentry for the third forcefield, and he's starting to get impatient, which actually buys me enough time to survive. He moves his army away from the ramp and scans it so that he can start firing at my gateway, all the while streams of reinforcement marines are coming in. My forcefield expires, and I have no sentry capable of putting down another, but he's busy trying to kill my gateway. His scan expires, the gateway survives, and he rushes up the ramp just as my fourth sentry finishes, which barely manages to block out some of the army. He finishes off the gateway and I have to defend with my poor probes as he stutter steps and micros his marines.

My voidray pops out and I do barely defend the attack. Warpgate tech finishes and I get a stalker out of my one gateway and move out to harass his base. Even though he had enough marines to kill both my units fairly easily, there's not a lot pure stimless marines can do to them as long as I'm paying attention. I make him cancel his bunker and kill a depot, and we go back and forth a little before he decides he wants to make his second push, this time with 16 marines and 6 scvs. My entire army at that point, a voidray and two stalkers, respectfully move aside as he moves down his ramp. I tried to pick at the army a little but it was clear that wasn't going to get much done, so I counter attack. He doesn't care.

He gets up my ramp, my base completely defenseless, runs into my mineral line, and then suddenly mothership. 14 cloaked probes decimate 16 marines and 6 scvs, my counter attack is wrecking his base, gg.

[Coin]

Any chance of you uploading the game? It sounds awesome

[Will]

Oh shit, is it Monday already?

Edit: and I concur. Upload the replay, plz.

[J the Ninja]

So this PvZ had just started, when my phone rings. Dad calling from the store, needing to check on how much of something we have left, and I was the only one in the house. I type a quick "pp" and hit pause. I come back to find...surprise surprise, game unpaused, I'm at 7 supply and floating 200 minerals. So I did what any self-respecting protoss would do. I swallowed my pride, took a deep breath....
















AND WON WITH MOTHERFUCKING BUILDINGS

Place your overlords carefully, kids.

[Kain]

So this PvZ had just started, when my phone rings. Dad calling from the store, needing to check on how much of something we have left, and I was the only one in the house. I type a quick "pp" and hit pause. I come back to find...surprise surprise, game unpaused, I'm at 7 supply and floating 200 minerals. So I did what any self-respecting protoss would do. I swallowed my pride, took a deep breath....
AND WON WITH MOTHERFUCKING BUILDINGS
Place your overlords carefully, kids.

I love how he decided three times that it would be a smart idea to attack the two pylons, rather than the two photon cannons that were closer to his base...

[You, sir, name?]

Caught up with some GSL.

GuMiho v. DongRaeGu game 2.

I was like "wtf am I watching?!" Shit's like a bronze league game with grandmaster multitasking.