Starcraft 2 - multiplayer

[Julius Seeker]

Feels much more familiar of a game than the campaigns. A few things though:

-Hydras have been replaced with Roaches, except roaches can only fire on ground units. Traditional Hydras still exist for aa (anti-air), but they're weaker, and require an upgrade of the hatchery to a lair. I played several when the opponent tried to swarm me with Hydras and got chewed up by Roaches.
-Zerg anti-air is weaker than before, but throwing up a few spore towers seems to go a long way this time around
-Queen unit is exceptionally helpful; she can create extra worms around the hatchery, so if (for example) you need 30 mutas right away because half your army of roaches got destroyed by air-to-ground; you can have them in a minute; granted you have the resources for it.
-Mutas and Brood Lords generally seem to be the best way to handle Protoss. Brood Lords replace guardians, but with some nice improvements =)
-Heavy Roaches against Terran, with some Hydras, Terran anti-air is very powerful; but it seems 9 out of 10 Terran players are not very good.


Unfortunately, people still lag out. I seem to get the bad end of the stick normally; of the 15 or so games I played, the only people who ever lagged out were on my team.

Zerg are my favourite race to play; but most of the good players seem to like Protoss.


Edit: Hmmmm, it seems if you have enough Brood lords + Mutas, then anyone is easy, although Hydras are often needed to target capital ships. Brood Lords chew up everything on the ground.

[Eric]

Feels much more familiar of a game than the campaigns. A few things though:

-Hydras have been replaced with Roaches, except roaches can only fire on ground units. Traditional Hydras still exist for aa (anti-air), but they're weaker, and require an upgrade of the hatchery to a lair. I played several when the opponent tried to swarm me with Hydras and got chewed up by Roaches.
-Zerg anti-air is weaker than before, but throwing up a few spore towers seems to go a long way this time around
-Queen unit is exceptionally helpful; she can create extra worms around the hatchery, so if (for example) you need 30 mutas right away because half your army of roaches got destroyed by air-to-ground; you can have them in a minute; granted you have the resources for it.
-Mutas and Brood Lords generally seem to be the best way to handle Protoss. Brood Lords replace guardians, but with some nice improvements =)
-Heavy Roaches against Terran, with some Hydras, Terran anti-air is very powerful; but it seems 9 out of 10 Terran players are not very good.


Unfortunately, people still lag out. I seem to get the bad end of the stick normally; of the 15 or so games I played, the only people who ever lagged out were on my team.

Zerg are my favourite race to play; but most of the good players seem to like Protoss.


Edit: Hmmmm, it seems if you have enough Brood lords + Mutas, then anyone is easy, although Hydras are often needed to target capital ships. Brood Lords chew up everything on the ground.

Just to critique a few points:

Roaches aren't better then Hydras, though it looks that way at first due to HP/Armor/Price, but Hydras start to win out in bulk, Hydras attack 2.4x faster then Roaches, and have 2x the range with upgrades, if 2 Zerg armies collide, the player with more hydras should win, provided they micro properly. In smaller numbers, Roaches can definitely beat out Hydras though.

For general usage purposes Hydras also rely heavily on creep, you can upgrade Roaches to get 3 movement speed, while hydras are at 2.25, but on Creep Hydras are at like 3.37 or something(Roaches are 3.9 on creep with movement upgrade, but the range/dps beats them out with proper micro), so you need to spread those creep tumors and overlord barf to really get the most out of your hydras, this goes for zerg in general, if you can push out with creep, do it, be vigilant about it, bring out your queens to put down 2-3 extra tumors if they have the energy, Zerg has a lot of things to keep up with this time around.

The Queen's spawn larva ability is there so you actually keep up with the production of the other races, if you fall behind in spawn larva you can lose the game, some zerg players like to throw down an extra hatchery because they fall behind on spawn larva. It's not just there to boast your forces, it's a requirement to keep up with the other races. =/

Zerg anti-air is awful in Tier 1, you can either invest in spore colonies, which can put you behind, or try to speed to tier 2, which again means you're probably not early expoing, which results in losing 90% of the time in the higher divisions. Your best bet is to simply early expo, and get 2 queens, and try and sacrifice an overlord to see if they're doing early air, if they are, you have to spam out extra queens, this allows you to be aggressive instead of turtling up, and the extra queens aren't wasted because again you can be aggressive with creep tumors, if you're really fancy you can use them in your attack force and heal other zerg units. ;p

Brood Lords/Ultralisks are very very awesome, but they're also an extremely late game unit, and very expensive, if you're getting Brood Lords against opponents while you have less then 2 bases, they're just awful for allowing it to get to that point. Mutas are still great harassment units and keep people in their bases, however a good Protoss player should be able to blink around after a certain point to stop it, and if you overinvest in them, when they knock at your front door, they lose to mass stalkers, and Protoss Death blob, Sentry guardian shields kill muta DPS on large armies as well. You shouldn't think "I have mutas, now I'm gonna win" you should think "I have mutas, what should I transition to now that I've forced him to be a little defensive."

Heavy Roach against Terran is typically a very bad bad idea unless again the Terran has no idea what they're doing, Muraders hard counter the ever living crap out of roaches, they snare, and do absurd amount of damage to armored units(which roaches are). You want infestors for the Terran MM^3 ball.

[Julius Seeker]

Some very helpful tips there; thanks Eric. I just started playing around with creep expansion, but mostly because I was experimenting with Spine and Spore tower expansion. I will stick with Hydras in the mid-game from now on.

[Julius Seeker]

Well, I've been fairly successful in 1 vs 1.

I am using the following strategy to nice success so far:

1. 10 drones
2. Pool
3. Overlord
4. Drones
5. Extractor 1
6. Queen
7. Expansion 1
8. Speed upgrade + Zerglings
9. Send 8 zerglings to the enemy base and kill units
10. If opponent is Zerg - send in drones to build spine towers while they are busy
11. If opponent is Terran and has blocked the choke - Lair > Overlord Speed upgrade > sneak in and hit them with a nidus worm in a place they don't suspect
12. Expand and build 2 extractor colonies (hatchery + 2 extractors + 6 drones + 1 queen)
13. Hydras and Infestors here with Mutas on the way
14. Keep harrassing opponent expansions + using Queen on hatcheries + expanding
15. Crush them with Brood Lord spamming.

You really can't relax for 2 seconds with the Zerg this time around.

My biggest mistakes come with missing hotkeys.

PS. I LOVE Infestors.

[Flip]

As i expected i would be, i am addicted to 1v1'ing and basically its all i play, haha. I'm also a zerg.

Versus other zergs, there are two ways it plays out. Either you both get banelings and play an intense micro game of cat and mouse with the banelings (which when they explode can kill handfulls of zergs or drones in one shot) or you go roach/hydra. If the baneling war turns into a stalemate most people will tranisition into mutas for a speedling/muta combination, but mutas get hit hard by hydras so if the opp is going roach/hydra then you are almost forced to do the same. It takes too many banelings to kill roaches, so they are not effective against this, and roaches can block a ramp if you put 3 or 4 next to each other in the hold command.

Versus Terran i have a hard time against Terran mech. If they go hellions for early harass into tank, its probably GG. Siege tanks are the absolute boss in TvZ and as a Z you really cant do much about it. The idea is to fast expand and hold off the first few waves with roach/hydra to hopefully get a 3rd base up and running and add ultralisks into the mix, but that is easier said than done. Especially since T has soooo many options. They can reaper harass, hellion harass, banshee harass, tank drop, thor drop... the list is endless with the cheap ways they can harass you and end a game with not many units. Banelings kill marines with one explosion so if Terran goes marines and marauders i'll usually upgrade banelines and rolls them in to hopefully clean up whats left with hydras.

Versus Protoss... well this is the matchup im having most trouble with since everyone and their mother goes protoss 4 gate now. They usually start with a gateway and cyber core to block off their ramp while they tech up to warpgates, drop a proxy pylon someplace, then build 3 more gateways and push. Its fast and effective. Sentries, zeals, and stalkers are 3 tier 1 units that are hard as shit to hold off. If you fast expand it might be impossible to stop on small maps. Stalkers can kite almost everything you have to throw at them but speedlings which melt to zealots. Sentry forcefield just adds to the disaster. If you survive the initial push, just wait 3 more minutes and suddenly colossus are there to really rape you hard. Toss and Terran can pretty much own you on one base while you struggle to hold them off and expand, which you have to do as zerg.

I like zerg because they are busy and you need to be moving all the time, but i am getting a little frustrated with them lately. This game has gotten hard and im at a point to where i only win 50% of my games now, so the matchmaking system is working. Zerg annoys me in that it is too hard to break chokes and be aggressive. Terran is harass king now, zerg cant do crap because everyone walls off and one base pushes against you when they have the right mix of units. Zerg is a very reactionary race in that you have to hope to counter what they throw at you and then you move in because almost any terran choke can destroy you with 1/4 of the army size. Spells like dark swarm in BW prevented this as did units that outrange static defense like guradians which seemed easier to tech to then brood lords. Most games dont get to broodlords. I one time almost lost to a toss who i utterly destroyed his main base because he was able to photon up an expansion with like 100 of the things, sit in his base and mass a stalker colossus army. I had the game won, but couldnt break photon cannons with anything tier 2. So i had to stand down, expand, and build up to brood lords which took forever. I'm not a huge fan of 45 minutes games, i feel like zerg should have more early game options. The only real attacking units zerg has is lings, hydras, roaches, and muta... very bland sometimes.

Anyways, i'm like a rank 50 diamond with 500 points. I have a stream i put up while i play so you can watch and comment and laugh if you want. http://www.livestream.com/DCElite
I need to work on my APM and while i dont miss many injections and creep tumor spreads, i could be better at it, too, like when a battle is going on.

[Eric]

I agree with pretty much all of your points. Though I'd honestly rather deal with 4 Gate Protoss push vs Terran pick your random 1 out of 20 strategy that I can't see that probably kills me any day of the week.

The biggest problem is Zerg early game is downright awful lol. Compare Zerg opening to Terran.

Terran can: Reaper, Hellion, Bashee(cloak optional), Fast Expo, Bioball M&M, Ghost/Nuke, Tank Rush, go Pure Mech, Medivac, or even vikings. Barracks->Factory->Starport, then pick your flavor.

Zerg has: Zergling, Baneling, Roach. Baneling bust doesn't really work against good Terran players, they can use really meaty buildings in the front, or 2 supply depots distanced from each other so only the first eats the baneling pew. Roaches get hard countered by Terran something awful as I said before, so that leaves you with Lings(With speed obviously). Which you can't do much with against the wall in the first place, so your option is to expo and hold off one of the 20 Terran openings and try to take the map like Flip said.

Blizzard said a balance patch will be out 5 weeks after release, but knowing them it'll probably be more like 3-6 months.

[Flip]

Almost every game against a P or T results in me fast expanding and praying to god i can hold off the 8-10 minute mark push that will inevitably come. Which like you said, comes in the dark since you cant scout up his walled off ramp without sacrificing an overlord which usually doesnt even see anything useful since they dont have the overlord speed yet. All my time and minerals are spent droning up the expo and i wont have anything besides spine crawler static D and speedlings to hold off the push. IF you hold it off, then you are in pretty good shape but even then it isnt guaranteed victory by any stretch of the imagination since you are unable to counter attack at all and still need to climb the tech tree as fast as you can to have a chance.

I'm reading a thread now on team liquid talking about some serious mass muta to counter terran and im liking the idea. I will def try it out next time i play since i like the thought of owning the map with speedling/muta and expanding everywhere. Supposedly he is saying that thors are not that great at holding off mutas as you may seem and if there are marines involved, the speedlings can transition to banelings and own them very easily. Again, this is all assumning you hold off the initail timing push. Sometimes, i wish i had a race where i could turtle up and simply attack with nothing but tier 1 (protoss 4 gate) or turtle up and simply tank my way to victory. I'm so over one base strategies that kick my ass, you cant prevent it because you cant get inside the ramp fast enough so you can only hope to stop/survive it. How are those races so effective off one base, i dont understand it. Mules and chronoboost? I really want an effective way to harass early game but it is impossible to break the ramp unless you commit yourself to a baneling bust, which doesnt work at higher level like eric said. One bunker or a simple two deep depot wall renders it useless. Drops and nydus are tier 2 and not fast enough. Zerg cannot harass, period.

[Eric]

I call shenanigans on mass muta countering Thor in any way. I'd have to see it to believe it, Muta harass forces marines, I agree with that point, which also makes Banelings effective, but Hellions with the igniter just makes the zergling/baneling threat disappear, and that's if you can afford it, and if they push forward with Thor you have to bring your mutas into the mix, and at that point the Thor splash just makes mutas go poof. =/

[Flip]

Yeah i guess the theory craft is that the T will probably not have marines, hellions, tanks and thors. Choose maybe 2 of that list. Thors and marines can be countered by the muta/bling, thors and hellions probably would be too since the idea is to spread your mutas before engaging with the stop command and then the move command to keep their fan out. Attack move clumps them too much and if they are bunched they will melt to 2 thors, yes, but their splash damage is deceptively small, so even a little spread will be ok. Also, they are saying you cant engage with 6 mutas, its worthless until you get 10+ to contain the T and then at like 30+(!) in spite how fragile mutas are you will roll over everything.

Who knows, ill try anything against a T and i like a strat that revolves around harassing/containing them for a change. Youve got to keep the T small and on one or two bases. Make him invest 100 minerals apiece in turrets and stuff he doesnt want to build. Attack the supply depots in the main that arent turreted and move slings into his naturals mineral line when he pulls his units up the ramp to get the mutas, etc. Hopefully with all that going on you have 2 bases of mins and a 3rd that probably is only getting gas and can mass up 30 mutas and then BLords if need be.

[Manshoon]

/wave
Fellow Zerg player here, just started doing 1v1s recently, but made plat and plan to join Flip in Diamond soon.

My playstyle is fairly offensive, I make some zerglings just to have them around, but like to tech to mutas fairly quick and do as much harrassment as I can while I expand, which works great if he's trying to go for a fast expansion (and the same reason I don't FE usually). I don't keep building mutas of course since eventually they'll have enough units or turrets to negate it, but it's good to try to get them to tech switch. The nice thing is if they build Vikings or Thors in response then I can breathe easy since those can be countered pretty hard by cheaper units. Of course, sometimes they'll just keep building their MMM ball and a-move into my base, which is usually GG for me. Personally I don't think 1-base Zerg builds early on get enough love; I mean resources being equal your army should be able to counter his, it's just a matter of the right comp and positioning. True, they have the mules for extra minerals, but I can't think that would put them over the edge that much, if both of you are spending your minerals and gas as you get it. Maybe it's different at Diamond levels...I'm sure I'll know soon enough when I get there.

Anyhow, I came across a good detailed ZvT thread on the official SC2 forums complete with replays that's worth a read or two: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic ... 925?page=1 The guy's a #19 Diamond so he seems to have a solid grasp of things.

And before I forget, Manshoon.581

[Eric]

So sick of Terran mech lol.

Match starts, inc Hallions, my mutas come out, Thor stops it, transition to roaches, muraders rape, stick with lings, hallion gets igniter upgrade, tech to hydras, tanks come and pew.

[Flip]

Yeah i tired the whole muta thing and couldnt get it to work. I dont have the micro or the harass skillz it seems... The most recent terran games ive won i skipped air altogether. Speedlings for the fast expansion/hold off the first attack wave, then pure roach hydra mix mid game while you try to get a 3rd base, ultralisks.

The hard part is holding off whatever they throw at you with your hydra/roach, but moving in fast next to those tanks and taking them out asap seems to help.

[Eric]

Bow before your Terran masters

[Flip]

i saw that yesterday, too. That game was pure dominance from he start to the end.

[Eric]

[Eric]

Annnnnd the nerf hammer has arrived.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/692221#blog

Greetings, citizens of the Koprulu sector! StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is celebrating its one-month anniversary and we’re extremely excited to witness the amazing community that’s come together around the game. To that end, we want you to know we are hard at work on the first feature and balance patch, and expect to have it completed and available by the middle of September. Patch 1.1 will contain a number of improvements including additional mod features, Editor improvements and bug fixes, some custom game improvements, support for NVIDIA’s 3D Vision, and more. We'd also like to share some specific plans for this patch with you.

To begin, we've heard a lot of feedback from our global community about standardized hotkey options. We're happy to announce that in patch 1.1 we are going to make the Standard (US) and Standard for Lefties (US) hotkey options available in all regions.

Balance Changes

We have several balance changes in store. One general change we're making is that friendly units will no longer provide vision after being killed. Enemy units previously revealed will no longer be targetable. Now let's break down the additional balance changes we're implementing.

• Maps
  
  We're going to be adding destructible rocks to the Desert Oasis map to make natural expansions easier to protect. In addition, the center map watchtower area is being narrowed.
  
  Protoss
  
  We have two key changes in mind for the zealot: the build time is being increased from 33 to 38 seconds, and the warpgate cooldown is being increased from 23 to 28 seconds. Zealot rushes are currently too powerful at various skill levels, particularly those that rely on rapidly assaulting an enemy base from nearby "proxy" gateways. We feel the window players have to scout for and fend off this rush is too small. We also want to address the problem of protoss being able to dump minerals a bit too quickly with the combination of warpgates and Chrono Boost.
  
  Terran
  
  There are several changes in the works for terrans. Reapers against zerg are stronger than expected. Due to the zealot build time increase, reapers would be a bit problematic in combination with proxy barracks, bunkers, and/or marauders against protoss. Therefore, we have decided to increase the build time of reapers as well from 40 to 45 seconds. Fast reaper + bunker, or fast marine + bunker rushes are problematic against zerg. Although this rush would never outright destroy the zerg player, we feel zerg suffers too much of a disadvantage from either having to cancel the fast expansion, or getting trapped inside the main base for too long, so we are also increasing the bunker build time from 30 to 35 seconds.
  
  Siege tanks in large numbers are performing too well in all matchups. In the mid- to late-game, siege tanks are too dominant against all ground units. We want a small set of light and unarmored ground units to perform better against siege tanks. With this in mind, we're changing the Siege Mode damage of the siege tank from 50 to 35, +15 vs. armored; to correspond with this, damage upgrades will be changed from +5 to +3, +2 vs. armored. This change reduces the base damage of the siege tank against light and unarmored units, as well as the splash damage.
  
  Battlecruisers currently lack good counters from the ground and still perform very well against a wide array of unit types. We're aware that it is not easy to get battlecruisers out for the cost, but at the same time, it is possible in both 1v1s and team games to create stalemate situations to bring them out. Overall, we feel that battlecruisers are too strong for their cost, and the terran-forced stalemate situations are causing less interesting gameplay. We will be lowering their damage against ground units from 10 to 8.
  
  Zerg
  
  Ultralisk damage is being decreased from 15, +25 vs. armored to 15, +20 vs. armored. This reduction is comparable to the changes being made to the battlecruiser and siege tank. Like the battlecruiser, ultralisks are simply too powerful for the cost, even though they are difficult to muster. Also, in combination with other units, ultralisks are difficult to counter from the ground. The ultralisk building attack (Ram) is being removed because the damage rate is too similar to its normal attack, which will be used against buildings instead. When ultralisks target tightly packed smaller buildings such as supply depots, the Ram attack is actually outputting considerably less overall damage than its normal attack, as Ram only hits a single target.

And Beyond...

We are reading your posts on the forums and creating lists of features and bugs to address in future patches. We have mid- to long-term plans to further evolve the Custom Game experience, and soon, enhance our social features with the addition of chat channels. We will be sharing more specific information in the coming weeks. As with all of our previous games, we will support StarCraft II for many years to come. Your feedback and participation is critical in making this not only the best game it can be, but also the most engaged gaming community in the world. We look forward to the implementation of patch 1.1, as well as sharing our plans for our future gameplay and Battle.net features.

We'll see you online!

[SineSwiper]

Man, that's a huge swoop of changes.

[SineSwiper]

[Flip]

Protoss kicks my ass as a Zerg player, but not in any of the capacities they nerfed. I havent seen a proxy 2 gate zealot rush in a long long time, but maybe the warpgate cooldown will help with those annoying as hell to fend off 4 gate pushes. Regardless, toss owns me with psi storm, colossus, phoenix harass, and of course 4 gate. Its really frustrating, they beat me more than Terran by a long shot.

[Manshoon]

Flip, I <3 when you rage in your Livestreams, especially at people who don't know what they're talking about.

[Flip]

Flip, I <3 when you rage in your Livestreams, especially at people who don't know what they're talking about.

Haha, its funny that i like to play a game that infuriates me so much. Livestream is fucking up lately, though. I have a few recordings that wont show up in my latest videos and i dont know why. I've nearly crawled up to 900 points now and was #10 in my division for a little. I think its #11 now. I'll probably be streaming today after work around 630. Hope this one will save correctly.

[Eric]

Dunno if you've seen this yet somewhat limited applications, but still pretty handy for dealing with Thors,

[Eric]

Also Flip since you were having some Toss trouble, maybe some reverse insight into how they function might help you out, I dunno.

http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4065228/
http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4069261/

[Flip]

Yeah i need to study up. I went 10-10 last night during the stream and 6 of those losses were from protoss while only 2 of the wins were.

There will be more raging tonight.

EDIT: Ive seen some of this guys videos before and he is too much to handle. If you wanted a picture of the stereotypical nerd, he would be perfect. Complete with social awkwardness hidden by flamboyant outgoing'ness... if that makes any sense.