273 replies to this topic

[Diablofett]

When I was playing Starcraft 2 awhile back I was winning more than I was losing. I did manage to get the 1v7 Insane Comp AI achievement before I stopped playing. I think that particular game took around an hour or two. Basically I just built defenses as quickly as possible and let the computers drain all of the resources off of the map. After that I picked them off one-by-one when it seemed they were not able to produce mass armies anymore. I was playing Terran at the time.

[Sneaky Snake]

Everytime I've been promoted it's been a season where I've been pretty active (probably around at least 50 games played over the length of the season). It's season 8 now I think. I've only been promoted during seasons that I've was active in.

So I guess win a bunch of games, and actually play 1v1's every few days.

[badger2d]

After not having played in a couple months, I'm starting a new experiment playing as Protoss. The score so far: Battle.net 10, me 0. (Technically I have one win sullying my perfect record, but it's no fault of mine! The guy quit the game 10 seconds in.)

My fairly well-honed, 200 games worth of Zerg instincts are all completely out the window. Zerg's principle strengths are cheap, fast units and adaptable centralized production; Zerg strategy in general revolves around early map control and rapid expansion. Protoss' strength is pretty much just the raw power of their slow, expensive units. About as opposite from Zerg as you can get, and it feels really uncomfortable to me to be sitting in a defensive position trying to tech and build up to a doom army while most of the minimap is a scary dark unknown.

And then there's just the fundamentals being different. For the first few games I was constantly forgetting to even just build pylons to keep my supply cap open, I'm so used to making overlords as part of my unit production that now having to make buildings to get supply feels really strange.

Having fun though! It's pretty cool how starkly different the same game can feel just from switching sides.

[Frost]

It may be just because other bronze players suck, but I had the best luck with Protoss by getting a couple Gateways (or whatever their barracks equivalent is called) up ASAP, getting a small army out, and then seizing and holding an expansion immediately and using that army and photon cannons to defend it while continually spending every dime you've got on more and more units as fast as you can. Best games I had 2 expansions fueling 3 gateways and 2 robotics facilities doing nonstop production and spared 600 minerals for some photon cannons around mineral lines to stave off Zerg mutalisk asshattery. Especially if you get a good death funnel set up going into your expansion, there's nothing they can really do short of grabbing a third expansion and trying to outspend you... which is easy to spot and counter without devoting too much attention to it thanks to the wonderful Protoss observers. I lost every game as Protoss until I tried that out... haven't lost a game as Protoss since.

Hitting sieged and dug-in Terrans with good micro can be a problem, but Zerg seem to melt away like butter once the army gets going if you haven't let them significantly outspend you.

[badger2d]

Well, beyond bronze, it's standard play to take your first expansion early. Your first expansion (or "natural", people call it) is always in a pretty defensible position, as you noticed, and it doubles your income as you get enough workers out, so it's good play to take it as soon as possible.

By gold league, where I am, you won't see one-base attacks at all most games; it's too risky. But you still do have to play the early game carefully, you will be punished by a sneaky rush now and then if you just lazily expand without doing a good job scouting out what the other guy is doing early. Always have to be on your toes in this game.

Particularly against Terran though, I don't know yet how to handle the 2-base stage of the game as Protoss. At that time they start building medivacs and abuse my lack of mobility with a combination of marine drops and frontal attacks. As Protoss you have so few units and they're so slow, it's tough to be ready to defend your expansion front if they attack in force and yet at the same time be ready to handle harassing drops at the back of your base. You can build a few cannons to help out at the most vulnerable spots, but you can't afford to cover your whole base that way.

It's a big difference from Zerg play that I'm used to, where you can just run a bunch of zerglings back into the base in the blink of an eye to chase off a drop. And you also see the drops coming sooner, because you've got overlords to keep an eye on the likely attack paths.

[Frost]

Well, I couldn't stay away, masochism won out and I'm back in 1v1. Had some SWEET games tonight. Currently on a 6 win streak, although the wind really got sucked out of getting a 5 streak as the 5th win the guy gave me out of pity because he successfully built like 20 battlecruisers by rushing three expansions in far flung corners that I missed and whipped my ass. While he was destroying my base my ground forces destroyed all his buildings (Carnage Hall achievement!), but they couldn't do jack against battlecruisers. I said, "Well, I tried to fight back" and was 3 seconds from surrendering, but when I clicked Surrender I instead hit Score Screen. He surrendered because, as he said in chat, I deserved a chance.

Great. A pity win. Oh well, I'll take it and still stick the 5 win streak achievement in my showcase anyway.

Got the 6th win fair and square though. Changed up my playstyle pretty significantly and mind gamed the other Terran into staying in his base as well as pulled a SURPRISE MARINE UP THE ASS on his SCV when he went to expand. Made him paranoid. Meanwhile I got some far flung expansions and then spammed Vikings. Watched for him to expand, then dropped a pile of Vikings in the middle of it, blew away his command center and 75% of his SCVs (Denied! achievement). He had a retaliatory move all ready to go and attempted what would have been a very successful drop in the rear of my base... but an early warning scout saw it coming and I had all 16 Vikings waiting for him by the time they got there. Poor dropships didn't have a chance (Raining Blood achievement!). By the time I finished mopping him up, 16 Vikings had become 20 Vikings and I had 12 Siege Tanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger guarding the entrance to my base and all ready to move out and counterattack.

His fleeing forces saw that right before they died. He quit.

I still went to his base and blew it up just for popsnizzles and giggles; I didn't build all those pyrotechnics just to let them go unused.

I'm amazed at just how effective that was though. When I go into team play and there's actually a little breathing room, I think I'm gonna give mass Vikings backed up by Siege Tanks with a couple Thors a go. If you have time to build that force, it appears to be DEVASTATING.

11 out of the last 16 games have been wins, with a pretty similar ratio for the ones that have gotten bumped off the match history. Hoping I can keep this up and get bumped to silver before Season 7 ends.


EDIT: Oh MAN. Make that a 7 win streak. Once again, decided to mix up my play. I'm always super aggressive... nearly all my games I build an assault force as fast as I can and assault the enemy base. This time I decided to just sit back and let the enemy come to me for once. Waited, waited, waited... nobody... waited... started getting really close to a 200 supply army. Had about 8 Siege Tanks, 4 Thors, 20 odd Marines, 10 or so Marauders, 6 medivacs, and about 8 Vikings, with 3 SCVs on auto-repair following the Thors. Scanned him and found his HUGE Colossus/Zealot/Stalker army amassed outside his base. As soon as I scanned it I guess he figured he better move before I built a counter... problem is I built a counter to everything.

He crashed into my base full force with everything he had. Battle lasted probably about 20 seconds. I lost all my infantry except a Marauder and 3 Marines, plus the 3 support SCVs. Medivacs were 100% intact, lost 6/8 Siege Tanks, 1/4 Thors, and 1/6 Vikings. I got the Meatgrinder achievement for killing 50 supply worth of units in 15 seconds, and I dare say I bet he did too. Problem was almost his entire army was gone except for like 5 or 6 Colossi, and I still had 3 Thors, 6 medivacs, 2 siege tanks, and a whole pile of Vikings, all of them undamaged, and all of them the exact WRONG thing to fight with a Colossus. The Colossi made a valiant effort, but my Thors and Vikings farted in their general direction and wiped out the Colossi while taking little more than paint damage. Plus I had so much money I was still pumping out units like a bastard.

I figured he probably dumped almost everything he had on me hoping to win there, so NOW NOW NOW was the time to counterattack. Loaded the rest of my dudes up on the dropships, scanned his base and found an vulnerable spot for ingress, and air dropped them in the back of his main base and just started going to town. He tried to kill the Thors with Zealots, but the Thors won. He tried to kill the SCVs with more zealots, but 6 medivacs healing 3 SCVs made them literally invincible. The Thors won. He tried to kill the siege tanks with the Colossi, but the Thors won. Then he tried to kill the medivacs with his stalkers, but... THE THORS WON, AHAHAHA. Meanwhile what little damage he had inflicted the SCVs kept erasing immediately. So he sent what he had left and overran my expansion, but took heavy casualties killing my reinforcements and Planetary Fortress. Landed my Vikings to reinforce my line. Lost them all, but bought time for... a fresh Thor to pop out of my Factory. Arnold Schwarzenegger killed his entire remaining force that was at my base.

Meanwhile this entire time I had my Thors and Siege Tanks on attack move just slowly blowing his base to kingdom come. Soon as I'd made a hole to his ramp, I sent the Thors charging down it and into his expansion's mineral line and annihilated his remaining Probes. He was still trying to warp in fresh units to continue the fight, but let's face it: 3 Thors and 2 Siege tanks in his mineral line, and he didn't see it but I already had a replacement Marine army, Viking air force, and yet more Thors amassing at my base...

He threw in the towel.

[badger2d]

Quote

11 out of the last 16 games have been wins, with a pretty similar ratio for the ones that have gotten bumped off the match history. Hoping I can keep this up and get bumped to silver before Season 7 ends.

Ladders will go into end-of-season lockdown tomorrow, so you better keep playing!

http://us.battle.net...-5_30_2012#blog

That said, you most likely will be promoted the moment the new season starts next week. The ranking system 'prefers' to change your league at the start of a new season rather than in the middle of one.

[Frost]

Oh shoot! Well, I'm probably not gonna have time to play at all for a few days after tonight, so I guess that works out anyway. My goals for 1v1 before I just play for fun only were to get the 1v1 Hot Streak 5 achievement, and unlock the Reaper, Marine, and Marauder. Have now attained all goals except the Marauder, and he's only 7 wins away, so as long as I can get him and finish with a decent standing for the season I'll be happy. I'm currently #13 in my division, so who knows, maybe I'll be able to crack into the top 8 of bronze even if I don't get promoted to silver.

I'll be surprised if a silver promotion isn't nearing though. Looking at the top 8 in my division, they're all within 150 points of where I am right now, but except for the #2 place, they all have 3-5 times as many wins as I do.

[Frost]

Just won again, bringing the streak to 8. I'm duly impressed with my strategy now. I played against a guy who was pretty fast/good, and I checked his profile in the postgame lobby. He's been in gold league in team and top 25 silver in 1v1, has over 650 wins. Probably trolling bronze for portraits. Never having played team and sitting in the bronze doldrums with only 23 (now 24) career wins, I'd expect rapid defeat from a profile like that.

Instead I handed him his ass on a platter by basically doing the same thing I did in my last win last night. Built a death funnel and lured him into attacking it with his main army, which got destroyed, then faked him into thinking most of my forces were gone from my base save for my siege tanks so he threw his reserve army at them to finish me off... well, he accomplished his goal. He killed almost all my siege tanks I had on defense. The price? His whole goddamn reserve army when I sprang the trap. Meanwhile I was landing Vikings in his far flung expansions and destroying probes by the barrel full, and had 6 dropships, two full of siege tanks, 4 full of infantry, headed to his primary base. He quit.

I was wondering how I'd do if I could face someone who wasn't a bronzie and was experienced. Now I know!

[Sneaky Snake]

Frost, on 04 June 2012 - 06:28 PM, said:

Just won again, bringing the streak to 8. I'm duly impressed with my strategy now. I played against a guy who was pretty fast/good, and I checked his profile in the postgame lobby. He's been in gold league in team and top 25 silver in 1v1, has over 650 wins. Probably trolling bronze for portraits. Never having played team and sitting in the bronze doldrums with only 23 (now 24) career wins, I'd expect rapid defeat from a profile like that.

Instead I handed him his ass on a platter by basically doing the same thing I did in my last win last night. Built a death funnel and lured him into attacking it with his main army, which got destroyed, then faked him into thinking most of my forces were gone from my base save for my siege tanks so he threw his reserve army at them to finish me off... well, he accomplished his goal. He killed almost all my siege tanks I had on defense. The price? His whole goddamn reserve army when I sprang the trap. Meanwhile I was landing Vikings in his far flung expansions and destroying probes by the barrel full, and had 6 dropships, two full of siege tanks, 4 full of infantry, headed to his primary base. He quit.

I was wondering how I'd do if I could face someone who wasn't a bronzie and was experienced. Now I know!

If you keep this up you'll be promoted in a week or two when the new season starts. You seem to have mastered quite a bit, so I expect you'll blow through silver league as well.

I got demoted today to gold league. To much fooling around lol I left like 5 games cuz i had to eat or something, and I was trying to learn protoss, which added some extra losses that I wouldn't have had if I was terran. Oh well, easier opponents now  

[Frost]

Well, I guess I missed my promotion to silver. It put me against a silver zerg and I got my ass handed to me by relentless infestor and broodlord spam. I would really like to know what to fight that with. Vikings didn't work, Marines didn't work, Thors didn't even work. Missile turrets are useless since they have what seems like twice the range. Even when I had him outnumbered. WTF. I probably could have dealt with that popsnizzle with Protoss using Colossi and Blink Stalkers, but I was just SOL with Terran troops against that crap. Do I just have to notice he's doing that and then mass Vikings or what? Oh well, back to facing bronze players.

EDIT: Wow, I just can't win tonight. Started off with 1 win out of 4 games.

EDIT 2: I forgot the warning I got about the late night portrait smurf crowd. Started looking at these people's stats after I lost. Diamond in 3v3. Platinum in 2v2. Oh, but we just happen to be Bronze in 1v1...

SURE, assmunchers. Sure.

So, I decided to do something I've abused numerous times against the computer to the point where I have it down to a science: the Banshee Rush. I haven't done cheese builds at all vs. humans, so why not go out with a bang and cheese nonstop? Soon as I started doing that, I started racking up wins like a SOB. Only had two losses, and both of those were because they rushed me first. Last two games I got matched up with silver players and smashed their asses with Banshees right out the gate for my last two wins. Anyway. Hit 30 career 1v1 wins, got my Marauder, and I'm calling it a night. No silver for me, but I did finish ranked #5 in my bronze division with WAAAAY fewer wins than the other top 8, and only 50 points shy of #1.

At least the diamond bastard was good for one thing: one of my units somehow got 40 kills after he assaulted me while he was controlling the whole frakking map (probably one of my siege tanks or Thors), and he sent 5+ changelings at me. Presto, Unbreakable and Meet the Spy achievements even though I got wrecked. Thanks, smurfer!

[Sneaky Snake]

Just so you know, what they're ranked in team play doesn't really matter all that much. It's not a good representation of skill. One season I was top 8 masters in 4v4, simply because me and 3 of my buddies (best of us was platinum 1v1, other 3 were silver and gold) just had all 4 of us marine rush every game. We cheesed our way into wins in all 5 qualifiers, and got put into masters league. I've been top 8 diamond in every team setup (2v2, 3v3, and 4v4) at least one season. However, I am solidly a gold level player at the moment.

In team games, everytime you make a new team, you get 5 qualifiers. So if I party up with 5 different people in 2v2 and do the 5 qualifiers with each of them. I've been placed 5 times for 2v2 that season, and on my profile it only shows my best placement. Also, I can party up with reallllllly good people. A few of my friends are 1v1 masters now. And so I party up with them sometimes to do 2v2's and 3v3's. They basically ensure victory, because they bring up our teams average skill level so much. Also, you can give control of your units to your teammates in team games. So if you have a really good player on your team, he will do all the micro'ing of all the units, and you only need to worry about your macro, so it makes it a lot easier for you to do good.

[badger2d]

Frost, on 05 June 2012 - 12:46 AM, said:

Well, I guess I missed my promotion to silver. It put me against a silver zerg and I got my ass handed to me by relentless infestor and broodlord spam. I would really like to know what to fight that with.

You need ghosts to EMP the infestors, so that your vikings can move in without fear of fungal growth and shred the broods.

Or more ideally still, prevent him from building that extremely expensive composition in the first place with more pressure earlier in the game. As a Zerg player myself, I can tell you that my favorite thing is peace and quiet in the early/mid game, because if I'm left alone, I will literally build no army until I have 80 drones on 3 bases, and I can get there awfully fast.

So you need banshees, or hellions, or marine drops coming into my mineral lines as soon as you can, or even just the direct approach of an army coming right at my front door. Anything you can do to get in my face and scare me into making units to defend myself, because every unit I make costs a larva that I wanted to make into a drone instead.

[Frost]

badger2d, on 05 June 2012 - 12:07 PM, said:

You need ghosts to EMP the infestors, so that your vikings can move in without fear of fungal growth and shred the broods.

Or more ideally still, prevent him from building that extremely expensive composition in the first place with more pressure earlier in the game. As a Zerg player myself, I can tell you that my favorite thing is peace and quiet in the early/mid game, because if I'm left alone, I will literally build no army until I have 80 drones on 3 bases, and I can get there awfully fast.

So you need banshees, or hellions, or marine drops coming into my mineral lines as soon as you can, or even just the direct approach of an army coming right at my front door. Anything you can do to get in my face and scare me into making units to defend myself, because every unit I make costs a larva that I wanted to make into a drone instead.

Yep, watched the replay and I think that was my main failing. Didn't scout enough and didn't put enough pressure on him. He was basically doing exactly that, and if I'd known what he was up to and hit him hard early I could have either finished him or at least put a huge dent in his game. Other than that, I. HATE. FUNGAL. GROWTH.

Basically tried to out-army him with a pair of bases, which has worked magnificently for me against Protoss and other Terrans, but apparently is the WRONG strategy against Zerg since unit spam seems to be markedly more effective for them than the other two. Protoss and Terrans, if they only use one or two unit types, as long as I have a balanced army I can wreck whatever they throw at me in huge numbers. Damn zerg though, it just keeps coming.

There a good strategy for dealing with Banelings as Terrans, other than having plenty of Banshees or a couple Battlecruisers on hand? Had zerg use balls of banelings against me for map control way too damn effectively. Even though I have the larger army, I can't kill them fast enough before they suicide on me, and then everything is weakened way too much for their much smaller, weaker army to finish off.

[badger2d]

Did somebody say banelings?



More seriously, dealing with banelings is mostly about microing your units. In bronze league where most battles mainly mean both players a-moving everything at each other, banelings are incredibly powerful. The thing about banelings though, is they're amazing if they hit squads of marines, but they're a cost-inefficient waste if they hit just about anything else.

So the classic example, let's say you're playing with marine/tank approaching a Zerg base. Marines on hotkey 1, tanks on hotkey 2. You siege the tanks up, then you poke towards the Zerg force with your marines. When the Zerg come at you with banelings and whatever else, you stim the marines and run back behind the tanks. The moment you've got the marines running, you hit 2 for tanks and target their fire onto the incoming glob of banes. Splash damage will take quite a few of them out and if they're just a-moved the rest will be wasted on the tanks; if not, there's probably few enough left rolling through that your marines can handle them anyway, not to mention the lings that will be coming behind that were meant to clean up after the banes.

Full disclosure though, I was never very good at this myself. I made a "temporary" switch to Zerg when I was a silver Terran with about 35 games played, because they were giving me so much trouble I felt I needed to see them from the other perspective to know how to fight back. Turned out I had so much fun as Zerg I never went back at all!

...oh I dug up one of my older ZvT replays where the game hinged crucially on positioning in an early confrontation involving banelings. I opened this game intending to go for a cheesy baneling bust (blowing up his wall-in with banes early and overrunning his base with zerglings), but screwed up my build and got the baneling nest down way too late. So I hung back and tried to make the best of it by setting up a ling/bane flank ambush at the watch tower to wreck him if he moved out carelessly. And indeed, he obliviously walked right into the jaws of the trap, and I had his army dead to rights and the game in the bag! But...well, see for yourself what actually happened, at about 9 minutes on the game clock.

[Frost]

So, basically what I thought, banelings are cheese bullpopsnizzle and the only way around them if you don't have a hard counter is plenty of micro. Figures.

I guess probably the best strategy against zerg is just be aggressive and keep pressure on early and often. I was having GREAT success against zerg doing a stepped siege-unsiege-resiege grinding approach to their bases in my earlier games where I'd do a one base all-in with Marines/Marauder/Siege Tanks. Hell, half the time I'd blow up their entire bioballs with almost no losses, and if they tried to go on defensive with spine crawlers I could just hang just outside their range and siege tank them to death while the infantry covered the tanks with a hold position order. They could never throw enough crap at me fast enough.

I think my problem is I found a more conservatively played two base, large, well-balanced army with reserves at the base, and air drops whenever there was an opening gave me a much better success rate against Terrans and Protoss, but... seems to have the opposite effect with Zerg. I just get unit spammed. I feel like Terrans are more susceptible to the Zerg strongpoints, too. I'm a MUCH better Terran player than Protoss player, but my Protoss wins against Zerg, it felt like I could chew zerg spam up and spit it out as long as I wasn't totally overwhelmed early on.

Probably wrong, but at least from the games I've played, seems like Terrans > Protoss > Zerg > Terrans.

Too bad I can't see what the enemy is gonna play beforehand and if they're Terran or Protoss, go Terran, and if they're Zerg, go Protoss.

Or, when I see Zerg, I build cloakable Banshees early for harassment, map control, and backing up the main force. That would probably work provided I have time to actually produce them.

[badger2d]

Siege tanks are the hard counter, is what I'm really trying to say. But you still need marines and you'll always have to micro them. Marines are amazing units that are cheap and massable and in numbers can deal incredible amounts of damage, at range, to any target air or ground, but the one check on their power is that they are fragile and thus have to be microed to keep them alive.

Overall, the game is amazingly well balanced, and one could discourse forever on the subject - pick any one aspect of the game and you can clearly place the races 1-2-3 in terms of how strong or weak they are in that particular aspect, yet the end result of all of those together is neutral. It's really quite a feat of game design.

Regarding your banshee idea, yes, cloaked banshee harass is a strong opening vs Zerg. They are weak both in anti-air and in detection early on. Banshees are very annoying to deal with.

The most common TvZ opening I've been used to facing, though, is hellions. You build a reactor on your barracks at the same time as you're building a factory, then swap the factory onto the reactor and pump out 4-6 hellions. You use those to clear lings off the watch towers and take map control, with the threat of poking into the Zerg base and BBQing drones if their defense is careless, while you expand behind it and set up your infrastructure for whatever midgame strategy you want to pursue.

[Sneaky Snake]

Everyone has their own strengths. I wreck zergs as terran, but I'm not the great against protoss.

[Frost]

badger2d, on 05 June 2012 - 11:45 PM, said:

The most common TvZ opening I've been used to facing, though, is hellions. You build a reactor on your barracks at the same time as you're building a factory, then swap the factory onto the reactor and pump out 4-6 hellions. You use those to clear lings off the watch towers and take map control, with the threat of poking into the Zerg base and BBQing drones if their defense is careless, while you expand behind it and set up your infrastructure for whatever midgame strategy you want to pursue.

Hmm, a solid idea.

You know. That's probably my big weakness right there. I never build Hellions. Ever. I like to do my harassing mainly with Vikings; fly in, transform, wreck something, then transform back to fighters and give the ground units the middle finger as I fly off. Meanwhile, while I haven't looked at stats, one on one Vikings seem to be more powerful than all the other air units, excluding the really expensive heavy air units, so if they counter with their own air units, the Vikings always kick their asses. But, Vikings are a lot more 'spensive than Hellions and not available nearly as early.  (As an aside, I gotta say that's one change I do really like from SC1 quite a lot; I always felt the damn Mutalisks were waaay too powerful. It's nice to shred the bastards with Vikings for a change).

I stopped using Hellions shortly after I started mainly because they seem to be made of paper and they lose, badly, to EVERYTHING but Zealots and Zerglings. But that doesn't mean I can't use a roving band of them for rapid scouting and map control, and to quickly punish poorly guarded expansions and then flee before reinforcements arrive, a la my Viking tactic. Plus any that survive a raid can run back to my defense autorepair SCVs for an oil change (repair) superfast and be right back out in the field.

Thanks for the tip, I will definitely try out incorporating early Hellions into my play and see how they do.

EDIT:

What are you guys' thoughts on unit upgrades, at least as a Terran? Not tech lab upgrades, but E-Bay and Armory ones. Do they make enough of a difference to justify the cost  of the structure and upgrade, or is the money better spent on units unless/until you have some excess economy?

[Sneaky Snake]

Upgrades are absolutely essential once your army starts getting to decent size. Upgrades are especially useful on the lower tier units like marines. A marine with no upgrades does 5 damage. A marine with level 3 weapons does 8 damage. It does seem like much, but that's a 60% increase in damage. Armour also helps a ton, although I almost always max attack first.

Another tip. You talked about dealing the mutalisks. Thors are slow, but absolutely wreck mutalisks. Reason being because the thors air attack is area of effect, much like the seige tanks seiged up cannon is on ground. 2-3 thors can kill a ball of 20 mutalisks in one or two volleys.

If your doing viking harass against zerg, also remember to pick of any and every overlord that you see. That should give him supply issues.