I have returned: StarCraft II

[tonyg]

I have a bad habit of ignoring my factory almost completely... I should probably fix that >.>

After a couple games, seems I'm just having trouble against zerg in general (as terran even, go figure). Can fight off protoss easy usually if they're around my skill. I get swarmed so easily and I can't do micro and macro well enough to handle it. Get locked into my base and can't expand, run out of mins

That's actually what I do against most bronze/silver players I play against when I'm a zerg, I pressure them into defending like mad and then put a zergling on every expansion landing spot so they either can't expand or have to move their troops out to kill the zergling and most of the time they'll simply forget to put their supply depots back up, so I just bust in with a few speedlings and rape their SCVs. I'm actually seeing a lot of stuff I used to do when playing terran/protoss and punishing it so hard as a zerg that it makes me wonder how I didn't lose more than I did.

Edit : Also started playing 2vs2 with my cousin as a teammate, going Z+T and holy shit, zergling harass to quick banshees is so fucking awesome, we killed 4 teams of plats in a row and then barely lost against diamonds, when we are rank 26 bronze lol.

[Kurp]

What is the best way for Zerg to answer early Phoenix? My friend used many of them in the past few games and I've only been able to respond with a bunch of Queens to protect my base and natural. Hydralisks seems like a decent answer, but they're terrible for attacking. I'm finding it very hard to both defend my base and pressure with attacks.

[Falaras]

What is the best way for Zerg to answer early Phoenix? My friend used many of them in the past few games and I've only been able to respond with a bunch of Queens to protect my base and natural. Hydralisks seems like a decent answer, but they're terrible for attacking. I'm finding it very hard to both defend my base and pressure with attacks.

Spores. Roach Hydra is awesome against toss if you creep spread so definitely not terrible for attacking.

[Salodin]

Spores. Roach Hydra is awesome against toss if you creep spread so definitely not terrible for attacking.

Just be careful with the scouting, if the toss sees the hydra and roach den they are stupid if they don't go colossus. Even with their cost, 2-3 of them with a few stalkers and zealots will destroy any roach/hydra army.

I don't know if I'm just rusty cause I haven't played from launch, but I'm falling behind on so many basic things from expanding to my natural easily to hitting supply cap when I really shouldn't be. I also like feel slower then I used to play, like I'm hanging around with my mouse not clicking stuff as fast as I used to. Any one want to practice some 1v1 or 2v2, either in custom or ranked, so I can get a feel for it back?

Also, does any one use a gaming mouse? I've been considering getting one, but I don't know if it's worth it. Does SC2 recognize the extra buttons? Does it make it easier to macro an army?

[Misuicide]

I used a Razor Diamondback g3. Fucking love that mouse, but my dog chewed up the cord. I spliced the wires, but it slowly died. I'll be getting a new one very soon. Now i'm just using some pos microsoft mouse, that gets stuck a lot.

[Salodin]

Just beat the campaign...wow. Sucks having to wait over a year for the continuation, and 2-3 for the finale. T_T

[Kaylia]

I realized the other day that I was rarely (if never) using ghosts. To make up for it, I've been mass producing them nonstop. Sure, it occasionally led to "oh shit mech...lets make more ghost" situations that werent quite succesful, but I'm having a blast so far

It still feel inferior to other strats, but ghosts+medivac microed can be crazy against ground bio. You can just drop them anywhere, snipe and run away. While not being great, I love the practice microing practice it give me.

What is the best way for Zerg to answer early Phoenix? My friend used many of them in the past few games and I've only been able to respond with a bunch of Queens to protect my base and natural. Hydralisks seems like a decent answer, but they're terrible for attacking. I'm finding it very hard to both defend my base and pressure with attacks.

Always drop the tech for spore colony around the time you get a lair, and the second you see phoenix, build a spore triangle around every hatchery, and produce more queens everywhere (you can never have too many queens when it come to defense!). It's usually the best first step.


Now, corruptor is the best defense against phoenix. 1 corruptor vs 6 phoenix wont do shit, but 3 corruptor can probably kill 6 phoenix without any lost if they aren't escaping (dont forget the corruption ability). However, protoss will rarely commit to phoenix once you stopped the initial threat, and these corruptor might be wasted if they arent building more air (collosus is air, so keep that in mind).


In the end, the best counter come down to how well you can read the game, and include these units in your build.


Spore (75+50/0): very good against phoenix to protect a base and queen at any given time, can help defense against observer/dt, but it's a big investment that wont move with your army
Corruptor (150/100): Own phoenix on equal number (Im tempted to say 2:1), good against collosus tech. It wont be able to chase phoenix, but you can force them into a fight eventually. It might be difficult/risky to drop a spire tech early if you went another path
Hydra (100/50): Extremely weak against phoenix if there is 2-3 more phoenix than hydra and in small numbers, but much stronger in large number (toss has to micro them individually).
Queen (150/0) : Can't be bad to have more. but if there is a large number of phoenix, they can disable all your queen easily.


So yeah, shit is situational!

[Falaras]

I have been thinking about the nuke rush strategy we have seen in the GSL and on Youtube on lost temple. Seems to have some uses (kills larva and extractors, might be able to kill Hatch if the player isn't pro-level considering pros only really manage to stop it right before the 4th nuke.) but teching to Ghosts during zerg isn't a good idea unless they go for Infestors and if you go for an early ghost they can just opt not to make any infestors.

[Kaylia]

I'm never able to makes nuke works in 1v1. I had a few lucky shot that led to win in the past, but its rare, and more luck based than anything. What make it worst is that I usually get stomped by the counter that follow up if I'm playing against an opponent with decent skills.


I dont want to argue that fast ghosts is a solid build, because I don't think it is, but I was still able to resist aggresive start in the few games I've tried, even with my shitty micro. With all the mineral left, you can also grab decent amount of marine/hellion to support the ghost.


Versus zergs, you can kill roach/muta with 3 snipes, infestor/hydra with 2 snipes, baneling with 1, broodlord with 5. Since every ghosts start with 3 snipes, and can stack up to 8, they have a lot of potential if you manage to keep them alive. The 10+10light damages isn't bad either between 2 snipes.


I dont know at which point ghost strats fall apart and automatically cost you the game, but as long there is bio units, you can usually make a good use of them.

[Falaras]

Early ghosts are decent, I've seen Marine Ghost pushes and since Ghosts absolutely rape light units and Marine/lings/lots are light. I wouldn't say its good enough to be normal but its definitely interesting/fun. Ghosts are really pivotal in TvP and I think if we see ghost builds in any kind of match up it will be that one, TvT would be interesting if the opponent is MMMing and you EMPed the Medivacs and sniped the marines but might as well just get tanks if they are doing that.

As far as nukes in 1v1, they can be nice. For instance there was a thread on TL about early nukes against Toss (EMP the obs and double nuke before they can get another out). I haven't got to try it because everyone just 4 gates anyways, but it at least sounds fun. There's also nukes in TvT forcing tank lines back.

[Kaylia]

Yeah, EMP is nice in TvP (and already commonly used,) but I wanted to explore ghost's potential in every matchup. Against protoss, they are mostly limited to EMP (templar, immortal mostly) and maybe a few snipe off lonely zealot. With the amount of stalker running around, its usually a bad idea to have more than 2 or 3.


Against terran, they are awesome against any bio balls and, scv ( hellion drop is better, but 4 ghosts with 8 snipes each can clear a base relatively fast if you have the opportunity.) They can force tanks back with a single nuke, and snipe range is long enough to hurt any units in front of the tanks. EMP works against raven, orbital command, medivac and banshee/cruiser.

Because they are terrible at killing thor, tank, banshee, and viking, you can't just blindly get ghosts and pray it works out though.

[Salodin]

So I think I'm gonna give up protoss for awhile. I don't know what it is but no matter how hard I pump units out, they just get raped to some of the more basic setups from opponents. I can go for hard counters like colossus against hydras/rines, immortals against roaches/mauraders, but the cost per unit compared to my opponents is just ridiculous and more often then not they curb stomp me because they out number my army 3:1 cause all my resources go into building two of these higher tiered units when they got 15+ of w/e other unit they want. Very very frustrating...

[Kaylia]

Do you mind posting replays that you feel were hopeless? If anything, protoss are overpower right now (stalker, collosus, templar are insanely good), there is a good chance you're doing a mistake somewhere.

[Salodin]

Yea sure let me find a good example.

Wow, at looking at some of these replays, there are some things I did really wrong. Think I'll give protoss another round and try a few different ideas.

[Kaylia]

I dont think playing other races is bad idea. Experiencing the limit of every races make it much easier to read the game and pick the right timing for your own actions, because you know exactly what the other is going throught.

Anyway, even without watching the replay, I can tell you what went wrong (probably).

#1 Scouting: You need a good idea of your opponent's potential army at any time to find out if you're safe or not (am I going to be able to build a defense in time if he decide to move out?). Taking a risk is not unacceptable (you can't always build around the worst case scenario) , but you need to be able to evaluate the situation and gamble on the better odds.

#2 Economy: Buid probe. Always. You need to saturate your main base as soon as soon you can. Even if you go above saturation, you can always send these probes to your expansions. The sooner you can expand safely, the better it is.


#3 Adapt. It's very important to learn the transitions if you want to be succesful . Many players have solid micro/macro, but their strategy fall apart the moment there is a tiny deviation from their build, and you can't let that happens. The only way to get around this is a good knowledge of the games, and try to outsmart your opponent.

[Salodin]

I do number 1 and 2 good, it's really the adapting that I fail at. Like I was telling anakron yesterday, I was doing good until about 10min in when I was sitting on too many minerals cause I didn't know whether I wanted to build more colossus/immortals, or expand, since I saw his army but didn't know what was best to deal with it (he had a lot of stalkers).

Since that game I've been trying to keep up on my macro and have been doing a little better against terran which I was having problems with, but now I have an issue with zerg where if they push with mass roaches early, I usually don't have the units to counter. Any tips? I'll upload the replay later after work so you can see what I mean.

[Falaras]

Well you can tell if they go for an early roach push by the fact they won't expand, get some Sentries to FF your ramp and either shut down the push or cut it in half. Don't know what you would do if you forge fast expanded but I'm not sure that's a good idea when your opponent zerg is 1 basing.

[Kaylia]

I stop roaches with canon+sentries early, then I use immortal or phoenix+zealot (phoenix suck against roach, but it allows you for a very powerful counter

[Falaras]

Sentries are just so important for Toss its unbelievable that people don't get them, I tend to enjoy a 1 Rax Marine + 2 Marauder opening into expand on short distance maps versus Toss and like 75% of the time there is no Sentry to FF the ramp and I pick off at least some stalkers and force some additional units.

[Kaylia]

Sentries are great, but they aren't cheap. For every sentries you get, you're delaying your tech considerably, and sometime, you will want immortal/collosus/dt asap.