Starcraft 2 discussion thread

[Norade]

I haven't talked to him, but every replay I see with TheLittleOne in it has me cheering for him. I just wish I had any skill at SCII so I could play at the level the pros do.

[Thanas]

I haven't talked to him, but every replay I see with TheLittleOne in it has me cheering for him. I just wish I had any skill at SCII so I could play at the level the pros do.

He is widely considered the best German player, both at SCI and SCII.

[Norade]

I haven't talked to him, but every replay I see with TheLittleOne in it has me cheering for him. I just wish I had any skill at SCII so I could play at the level the pros do.

He is widely considered the best German player, both at SCI and SCII.

That's really cool, I love how he's a random player and likes to make nice bold moves. It makes him really entertaining to watch.

[Zed]

Have you guys seen TLOwnage? It was hilarious. He reminds me of Boxer in his ingenuity.

[Crossroads Inc.]

So who here plays the 'Custom' games?

I got burned out a bit doing multiplayers last week and took a look at the custom games out. I know during the hight of WC3 there were hundreds of custom games. I guess because SC2 is new theres only about a dozen. Though even now we have some classics, your tower defense games, your defend the castle games. My favorite of WC3 was "The Cube" a great tower defense were you only ever got one life, so no mistakes.

This time around I have found myself addicted to "Nexus War" 4v4 game with a team on each side that just builds a crapton of units that run mindlessly toward one another and battle it out. Team that builds an army that can beat back the other and destroy thier nexus wins.

Been having fun with this game as there are a surprsingly large amount of different tacticus to employ. usually in custom or tower defense games everyone finds a single tactict and just repeats it. This one I really love since your teamed against 4 other players and things are always unpredictable.

[ArmorPierce]

Zerg vs Terran is unbalanced. The vast majority of high level players agree. There has been some development of strategy I've seen that have been able to counter terran to some degree but it is in the terran's favor.

Yeah, Infestors are the Zerg's most effective anti-Terran weapon. Their spells are all useful. An offensive fungal growth(that is, done about 10 seconds before you attack), will ruin marines. A fungal growth + several infested Terrans will wipe out in a mineral line in a few seconds. Neural Parasite turns those nasty Tier Three units (BCs, Thors) against their own side.

Neural parasite is pretty close to useless. Range is relatively low, infestor is left imobile and basically has a big 'hit me' sign and it only lasts a few seconds (15 seconds, but would be in shorter since games are played on faster mode). The other two abilities are good though.

Oh and my name is ArmorPierce.959 if anyone wants to hit me up in game. American server.

[Stofsk]

Well I've finished the campaign a second time on brutal, and I've got over 90% of the achievements (some missions were annoying in their achievements, and I'll have to revist them, but Hurry Up Its Raid Night is one that would need to be done in a whole new campaign! Ugh).

Thanks should go out to Thanas for helping me out of a couple of tight spots with his advice. Youtube was also useful in some of the video walkthroughs they've got.

[hongi]

Have you seen some vids of Idra? Man what a petulant child. I always cheer his opponent, his impotent nerd rages when he loses are hilarious.

[Stofsk]

Have you seen some vids of Idra? Man what a petulant child. I always cheer his opponent, his impotent nerd rages when he loses are hilarious.

I'm looking him up now. Do you have any choice links to watch?

EDIT: ahahahahaha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPnd2TWPcBQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3kNiBGB ... re=related

You're right, he's pretty petulant.

[Thanas]

Is it me or is the practice league completely overrun with people who could be playing in the real leagues? I just played 13 quick games and barely managed to win 7 of them.

Any suggestions to counter the viking rush playing as a terran? I've had success with a quick reaper rush to counter, but that is about it.

Note: I am talking about the situation where a player builds 4 vikings or so and then lands behind your SCVs to take them out.

[Zed]

It doesn't sound like anything beyond a harassment move, and one that requires heavy investment as well. Have you tried a sensor tower to anticipate them, backed up with marines (and, if it persists, placing a few turrets in the mineral line?)

[Thanas]

It doesn't sound like anything beyond a harassment move, and one that requires heavy investment as well. Have you tried a sensor tower to anticipate them, backed up with marines (and, if it persists, placing a few turrets in the mineral line?)

Doesn't really work. They just move around sensor towers and turrets..which are useless anyway when they switch to ground move.

And building that many turrets far consumes more resources than just a few vikings.

The only thing that I found to work are countercharges by vikings.

[Zed]

Could you upload a replay so I can check out the situation?

[Thanas]

Sadly no. I'll try and get one.

Maybe I'll perform one.

[Iosef Cross]

(I'll probably stick to AI for now, til I get confident enough to start playing against people)

Actually, since blizzard matchmaking system automatically put you in a certain level with other players, you are almost certain to have 50/50 win rate. So, if you are afraid to lose, don't worry, everybody except the best diamond players, lose around 45-55% of their matches.

[Iosef Cross]

Nothing better than a fleet of battlecruisers entering a base and ruining everyone's shit

Unless said player has gotten Vikings....

Actually, well micro-ed battlecruisers doesn't have any effective counter. If you have 12 bc's, the enemy will need 30 vikings to compete, or 20 void rays (and with well managed yamato cannon, you can defeat 20 void rays with 12 battlecruisers). The only way of defeating a BC fleet is by massing the same proportion of resources countering it.

The BC was designed as a late game weapon, to decide games in stalemate, like the carrier/mothership fleet, it doesn't have any easy counter.

[Zed]

Hydralisks and stalkers? Marines?

[Iosef Cross]

Is it me or is the practice league completely overrun with people who could be playing in the real leagues? I just played 13 quick games and barely managed to win 7 of them.

The skills needed in multiplayer are different from the skills needed in single player.

If you play terran, and I am a platinum terran player, I advise that you practice the following:

depot
barracks
depot
refinery
orbital command
factory
depot
refinery
tech lab ---> tanks

You should have a factory up in 4:30 and tanks rolling off by 6:00. Also, you should have 5 marines by 5:00. If he rushes with vikings, he will need at least 7-8 minutes, at that time you should have enough marines to defend yourself.

Any suggestions to counter the viking rush playing as a terran? I've had success with a quick reaper rush to counter, but that is about it.

I never make reapers. They are a waste of resources to my long range planning type of strategy.

Note: I am talking about the situation where a player builds 4 vikings or so and then lands behind your SCVs to take them out.

Yep, they always do. You should have your army close to your base and you should be fast and move your army onto them, at the same time moving your workers out.

[Iosef Cross]

Hydralisks and stalkers? Marines?

Marauders for Stalkers and Roaches. Hydralisks? Siege tanks are a good option, I guess.

[Zed]

I was mentioning them for countering battlecruisers.


Regarding reapers, I suppose you mean: against Terran? They're quite good for early scouting Protoss and Zerg, and they're very handy for harassing their workers early on. It's not too difficult to kill 2-3 at least with a single reaper.

[Minischoles]

Is it me or is the practice league completely overrun with people who could be playing in the real leagues? I just played 13 quick games and barely managed to win 7 of them.

Any suggestions to counter the viking rush playing as a terran? I've had success with a quick reaper rush to counter, but that is about it.

Note: I am talking about the situation where a player builds 4 vikings or so and then lands behind your SCVs to take them out.

Getting to Viking is going to require a fairly large mineral and gas investment, and is best countered by scouting, which if you're playing in the practice league is somewhat difficult due to the blocks on the map that help prevent rushing.
To reach Viking, at minimum he's going to need to have built a barracks, a factory and a starport, along with a refinery to get some gas (in this case i'm assuming no supply depots or extra SCVs, which would push the time back even further). If you're terran, it might be worth burning your first or second 50 energy from your Orbital Command and scanning the enemy base, just to get a quick view of it. If you see the 1/1/1 build, then you can plan to counter it.
As terran, your best bet is either to spam out the marines, along with stim packs. You'll lose a godly portion of the marines though without some medvacs to back them up, but if you add in a few missile turrets as well you can defeat it, with little loss to your SCVs if you pull them back.

Protoss is fairly easy, since you don't need scouting, and your reaction to most Terran harassment strategies can be boiled down to 'build stalkers'. Get yourself an early gateway and refinery, then a Cybernetics core and Chrono boost out 2 stalkers. With a little micro you should be able to see off the viking rush. The other option isn't really applicable on the practice maps, but just zealot spam the enemy. If he's teching up to Viking, a zealot rush should catch him offguard.

Zerg probably have it toughest to counter a viking rush, you've got a few options but none are really perfect. Spine Crawlers protecting your mineral line, along with a Queen to hit them in the air can work, but that's a heavy investment early on, and requires scouting - if you're wrong about what he's doing, then you're boned, but this does work versus Reaper Rush as well. The other option is a fast tech up to some Hydralisks, which is perfectly doable since you don't really need zerglings on the practice maps, so you can afford to spend all your larvae on drones and fast expand.

[Thanas]

I've found that stationing two-three marauders near your mineral line works wonders against both viking and reaper rushes.

[Crossroads Inc.]

As Terran, I have played a lot of games with Vikings and seen vikings used a lot, and have come to the conclusion that is virtually impossible to win a game using them.

The simple fact that vikings can only attack ground, if they are on the ground, nullifys them from so many tacticts. The main thing is two maraduers can easily take out two Vikings, and Maras cost a whole hell of a lot less.

That's not to say Vikings cant be a pain, 10 vikings landing in your resource collections is going to mess things up, but unless they run at the first sign of a returning army, they will get creamed.

I did a game were my opponant went mass vikings, he had over 40 of them before they finally met our army. I had a big ground aermy and a few Banshees, my ally had a small army of walkers and some Phoenix.

When we met the Vikings tore threw our air fleets, but then started getting hit by my missile turrets. All 60 of them or so landed, and they got chewed up by our ground armies.

To be fair, I lost about 3/4 of my forces, and the4 protoss player lost all of his. But these were forces that cost less, and would be easier to replace then vikings.

On the flip side of things, a very early viking attack. I staved off a group of 3 vikings that rushed me pretty damn fast. However I had 3 Mara's and had just finished my first tank when the vikings landed. Again they wipped out a good portion of my workers, but they themeslves were owned in moments. IMHO, the only worth while role for vikings is purely as Anti air. The only usefullness for ground attacks is landing on islands or isolated areas, and then they are only usefull if they cann attack before anything else shows up.

Also, a note on stalker armies. One tactic that I do see on Protoss that DON'T go void spam, is stalker spam. They are cheap and quick to produce and I often seen Stalker armies own other players. Well, if you are doing Terran you can't beat tanks. It baffles me how often I'll see a Terran player attacked by stalker armies and try to counter with mass Mara's or marines, its as if people forget just how usefull tanks are when NOT in siege mode.

[Thanas]

I have found that Viking rushes are great if your opponent is going for high-end units and does not produce more than 4 ground units or so.

A favorite tactic of mine against such players is harass them with 2 vikings. By the time these are wiped out, I have usually another 2 in the air. Then banshees with cloak for the kill. Obviously, this does not work if the terran player immediately produces marauders, but few people seem to do so in the matches I have played.

[Zed]

I advise you to get out of the practice league as soon as possible, Thanas. It's not representative of actual play, and actually encourages bad habits, including a lack of scouting. Opponents that don't produce more than four ground units... are hard to come by in an actual game.