I have returned: StarCraft II

[Eanae]

Idra needs to hurry up and lose. Ugh.

[Eanae]

Spoiler: show

Fuck yeah MC. The zerg tears on reddit are hilarious. I love how big of cry babies zergs are.

[Bweigelt]

Spoiler: show

IdrA's PvZ is just so bad compared to his other match ups. He has some sort of mental block against P (and especially MC) where he just makes terrible decision after terrible decision.

[Misuicide]

yea oh well, he was on a roll. I never liked his PvZ anyway, he just plays silly!

[Gredival]

yea oh well, he was on a roll. I never liked his PvZ anyway, he just plays silly!

It's kinda like what the casters at IEM said when he barely pulled off that win vs Elfi going Roach/Hydra against the deathball. It's possible to win with that style, but it's so much weaker as a strat because of the fragility of that composition against Collosi. Lose too many Corruptors and it's over. But IdrA just likes using it because it plays to his strengths.

[Thunder]

aw man, I knew huk had a good chance before the game vs marineking. He'd be up 1 game vs mc if they met in the finals, and up 1-2 games on stc/mkp if they made it - huk only had to hope bomber doesn't make it. Or idra, but I think Idra would have been easier than starting 1 up vs mkp/mc/stc.

Now he's got a final where he's up a game, that's awesome.

And does anyone else think idra's zvp suffers because he doesn't have any good protoss practice partners? He and huk don't practice at all, and he doesn't have much going for him at the practice house. Don't think there are many NA protoss he's friends with, either - or any of the european protoss for that matter. I don't even know if this is a significant issue for a player's vX matchup but it's something I think about.

[Gredival]

What are you talking about, he gets to practice all the time against the great iNcontroL!

[Maguspk]

How do you know he doesn't practice with HuK, got to love comments from the peanut gallery like they mean shit.

[Gredival]

How do you know he doesn't practice with HuK, got to love comments from the peanut gallery like they mean shit.

HuK said in an interview that he and PuMa don't really practice with the guys in the EG house because of time differences, but that he still enjoys the relationship he has with the rest of the EG crew. They mainly get together at foreign tournaments to share intell on the different styles players are developing in the separate scenes.

This of course will change when IdrA goes to join HuK and PuMa in Korea.

[Gredival]

HuK wins the Grand Finals vs. MC, 4-1

[Thunder]

How do you know he doesn't practice with HuK, got to love comments from the peanut gallery like they mean shit.

Why are you such an angry person?

Not only has huk said it, but incontrol has talked about it as well.

[Blarg]

How do you know he doesn't practice with HuK, got to love comments from the peanut gallery like they mean shit.

oh, irony

[Gredival]

For reference sake, corsairs were never really used in professional level PvT in Brood War. Dealing with tanks was usually left to speed shuttle + zealot bombs and shuttle/reaver micro. Or if it got really late, then shuttle storm play. Keyword is shuttle by the way, I would love if warp prism could offer the same tactics early on for 1/1/1s (ie more than 1 colo could fit inside it ). Outside of that, it was just unit splitting and flank attacks, which are pretty much still very good ways to deal with them in SC2.

And though defilers were important for anti-tank, it was only in conjunction with the lurker. This was because dark swarm did not block the splash damage, but burrow did. Even still, tanks were WAY stronger in Brood War than in SC2 just in pure damage numbers, and mech was pretty insanely good against both Protoss (where it was standard) and Zerg (where it shared the spotlight with bio depending on the time period). I still have nightmares of seeing some of Flash's TvZs where he would mech and just seem to kill infinity zerg units.

Yeah but Protoss also had Statis Field for the same purpose, which iirc, was used decently often. Plus ramps are much more prevalent in SC2 maps, which is advantageous for tanks, and Recall wasn't locked up in the damn Mothership.

[Bweigelt]

Yeah but Protoss also had Statis Field for the same purpose, which iirc, was used decently often. Plus ramps are much more prevalent in SC2 maps, which is advantageous for tanks, and Recall wasn't locked up in the damn Mothership.

I wouldn't say Ramps are more prevalent in SC2. Yeah there were a few maps with no ramps like Tau Cross, but ramps favored the defenders even more in BW than in SC2. Tanks in general feel a lot less powerful in SC2 compared to BW, especially against P.

[Julian]

dude, idra practices with mother fucking AXSLAV!

I had a great time. Was definitely worth going, everything was great, the only real disappointment was not getting to talk to any of the casters. and fu, I love day9.

[Maguspk]

Why are you such an angry person?

Not only has huk said it, but incontrol has talked about it as well.

oh, irony

[geno]

I wouldn't say Ramps are more prevalent in SC2. Yeah there were a few maps with no ramps like Tau Cross, but ramps favored the defenders even more in BW than in SC2. Tanks in general feel a lot less powerful in SC2 compared to BW, especially against P.

This is true. Anyone who watched a lot of BW should not at all be annoyed by tank usage in SC2, because it pales in comparison to how ridiculously strong they were in Brood War, lol.

And yeah I forgot about stasis, that was a very strong and often used spell in PvT. But it was about as late game as Motherships are in SC2 (required like every tech), so it's disingenuous to think they were the way most Protoss dealt with tanks in BW. Most push breaks were some combination of speed zealot flanks / spread out move-command into A-move attacks / zealot bombs, occasionally with reaver support. If someone rushed arbiters it was usually more to force scans and/or to use recall, as well as to mass up arbiters to have a lot of energy later and force at least SOME anti-air.

I'll admit mothership just doesn't handle that role nearly as well though. The high cost, limit of one, and ridiculously slow movement speed just make it not nearly as useful as the arbiter was when it comes to recalls. When it comes to vortex (which is I guess a modern version of stasis in a lot of ways), the similarity to arbiters is a bit more consistent, but again, the fact that there is only one means only one big fat easy EMP target (as opposed to the often awesome arbiter splitting & hallucinations we'd see in BW to draw out and waste EMPs).

If I'm being honest, I'd love to see a lot of the new units they put in for protoss go and be replaced by their predecessors, lol. Reaver was a more interesting unit than colossus and arbiters were a much better unit the mothership. Charge is nice, but I preferred the oldschool speed upgrade personally, which was still useful with move command instead of just attack, thus making it much better for keeping a split up army to charge into tanks. And of course, I'd love it if they put the carrier back in (lol). I am actually fine with the dragoon -> stalker/immortal switch though, because fuck dragoons and FUCK their AI. Though I do miss their blue goo when they died, at least immortals should have that ludicrous amount of blue goo

[Julian]

For someone whose limited BW experience only includes a small portion of the campaign, could you tell me a bit about the differences between shuttles and warp prisms?

From what I hear, shuttles sound like they were extremely standard in BW, but they're somewhat underused in SC2.

(I enjoy reading all of the BW talk. )

[Bweigelt]

For someone whose limited BW experience only includes a small portion of the campaign, could you tell me a bit about the differences between shuttles and warp prisms?

From what I hear, shuttles sound like they were extremely standard in BW, but they're somewhat underused in SC2.

(I enjoy reading all of the BW talk. )

Speed. Shuttles moved way faster in BW than warp prisms do. They had a slow ramp up time to get to that speed, but that could bypassed with good micro. Also there are no Reavers in SC2 which was the primary unit the shuttle was used for.

[Gredival]

And yeah I forgot about stasis, that was a very strong and often used spell in PvT. But it was about as late game as Motherships are in SC2 (required like every tech), so it's disingenuous to think they were the way most Protoss dealt with tanks in BW...

I'll admit mothership just doesn't handle that role nearly as well though. The high cost, limit of one, and ridiculously slow movement speed just make it not nearly as useful as the arbiter was when it comes to recalls. When it comes to vortex (which is I guess a modern version of stasis in a lot of ways), the similarity to arbiters is a bit more consistent, but again, the fact that there is only one means only one big fat easy EMP target (as opposed to the often awesome arbiter splitting & hallucinations we'd see in BW to draw out and waste EMPs).

...And of course, I'd love it if they put the carrier back in (lol).

Take all of that together and you see another part of the problem. In SC2 Terran has complete air dominance in PvT. Vikings are incredibly effective vs. every single Toss air unit (as well as Collosi) and are compatible with reactors. Banshees are a lot more effective air to ground than Wraiths. Combine that with Carriers being relatively weaker, and the Mothership being far less useful than the Arbiter, we rarely see air played vs. Terran because there simply isn't as much payoff to getting that far in the tech tree.

Also EMP being on Science Vessels made it a lot easier to deal with than on Ghosts imo.