I have returned: StarCraft II

[Falaras]

haha, I don't mention Marauders at all there lol. If you take a comment like 'Now they should nerf Maraudres and I'll be happy ;p' seriously, then you must have poor reading comprehension. Also find it funny how you say Hellions have no place in normal play. Tell that to TLO and his Hellion build. Since you obviously are failing the see the only point I've tried to make in every post, here it is for your dumb ass spelled out quite simply: Siege Tech allows the Terran player to play extremely defensively and even defend locations very well with few supply, this affords them the opportunity to pace the games they play, this just happens to be especially true for the zerg match up. Also you make the assumption repeatedly that I am complaining from experience on ladder, I don't even fucking ladder, I just watch replays occasionally from GSL (SC2) and BW (OSL Finals, OMFG 4 pool hahaha), I don't have time to grind out points on ladder. The fact that siege tech is like the biggest flaw with the ZvT matchup is acknowledged by every Zerg player worth their salt and Blizzard acknowledges it too, you're making no sense trying to say 'it's fine' in all your posts when literally every source besides Mr. Falaras agrees on this point.

You seem to fail at one very specific point also, Seige Tanks make the terrans army almost completely immobile. You might as well run DTs into cannons and go "WELL THATS OVERPOWERED". Defensive playing has weaknesses, take Metalopolis, you cannot defend your half of the map with seige tanks, it's too wide. If your opponent is going for turtling seige tech just fucking out expand him, he won't be pushing you anytime soon. Once you have all four of your bases (assuming you can't take gold due to seige tech) and managed to shut down his expansions by hitting different points, just out power him with minerals. It's funny because you constantly say every zerg player says seige tech overpowered, when that's not even a point most of the time and 5 rax reaper is. Saying that blizzard acknowledges Seige Tanks are overpowered because they nerfed them is like saying blizzard acknowledges 4 gate is overpowered, protip: It's not but they want to balance the game for EVERYONE and not just highest level players so nerfing things that bronze players have trouble with is important.

[Syntex]

Your right with your point that tanks are immobile and that some maps like the one you mentioned suck for defending but at the same time there are still some things that are too fucking good that terran have.

A planetary fortress able to kill 50 supply of hydras and roaches because the SCV's there can just up and repair it on top of splash damage is fucking retarded. That and 1 thor with scv's repairing it is also retarded.

And I agree they need to balance for everyone but making changes to make high end games equal will have a snowball effect to make zerg balanced on the bronze level too.

[Kaylia]

infestor+ultralisk is the best counter for planetery fortress. Fungal growth the scv and finish the fortress with 2-3 ultralisk. They can be an annoyance early games, but considering how good ultralisk are agains terran, you will usually get them anyway.

[geno]

I feel like Falaras hit the nail on the head with that last line, but with the opposite intention haha. They are definitely trying to make it work on multiple levels of play, but tanks aren't a problem in low level play, they are a problem in high level play. The kind of mass expand strategy you are talking about works very very well, even up to mid diamond, but when you start watching the masterful aggression in league and tournament play, you just aren't going to get away with it 9 times out of ten. Terran is a very strong race off two base, and their timing attack comes out a lot earlier than you seem to think it does.

For 4 gate you are right, it certainly isn't the big deal for top players that it is for low players. But for tanks, it really is the opposite. They are extremely immobile and leave you susceptible to well targeted attacks like you said, but not really the case at the top levels. Slow pushes have extremely few weaknesses, and make their way across the map a LOT faster than you imply.

Anyways, I still want to jump out of this balance debate because its kind of stupid with a patch on the way which may have things we don't even know about yet. There are better arguments to be made for making changes from the angle of fun and ease of use. I think, even if we acknowledge there to be a perfect theoretical balance in the game (a bit naive to assume this off of 3 months of beta and a month of release but lets just assume!), you still have to deal the many other factors that will influence the game's success as a competitive platform. And that means a strong diversity in race selection (no one wants to watch TvTs in every tournament). While the campaign may have affected this somewhat, particularly at the lower levels, I'd argue that there are MUCH larger contributing factors for high end play. I know for a fact that a lot of the top end players on the tourney scene haven't even touched the campaign for this game. Yet there is still only 1 zerg and 4 protoss players in the top 20 US.

A lot of this comes down to, in my opinion, how easy and how fun it is to play Terran. Fun because its a lot less stressful to be able to be the aggressor or defender all while maining pretty strong control in the game. Easy because it's just plain a lot easier to do some of the signature terran attacks than it is to defend them. 5 rax reaper, early marauder push, timing tank attack, or just general MMM play all require really intricately planned and amazing executed responses to handle well, even when the actual attacks are executed by poorer players. And so yeah, strong players will overcome, and we may even see the best player in the world be a zerg or protoss. That doesn't mean the game is in a good state though, if it takes a superhuman player (like Flash or Jaedong of BW) to show off the race's potential. If its harder to do, we'll see less of them in tournys, plain and simple, and that's not a good trend for the game's long term growth.

[Falaras]

If we move out of the balance debate it does become a real problem that most people don't play zerg, I don't really think its about how easy it is for terran to control the game and more about annoying things like Queens and no T1 anti air. There is also the fact that maybe zerg is just the least liked race, it is the "Bad guy" race and professional players didn't pick their race thinking of going pro, they picked it on what they wanted to when they first started (dating back to Starcraft 1 and a lot of people kept their SC1 race). For instance the group of friends I play with has 0 zergs at all, it has nothing to do with balance or ease of the other races and just the fact they don't like the idea of zerg. I would also say out of all the races from Starcraft 1 zerg has changed the most with things like Queens allowing mass larva without in base hatches. Our skill levels range from Gold to Diamond but none of us are good enough to even mention balance as a reason for losing or winning. I'm not really sure how you would go about fixing a general dislike of the race except maybe making them overpowered, even then that wouldn't affect most people.

[synistar]

One big gripe I have is burrow is lair tech in sc2 and hatch tech in sc1. I know it's due to balance in zvp (lulz detectors) but roaches are so meh if they can't ambush to close that range. There are a bunch of times I wouldn't have minded having burrowed zerglings earlier in the game for an easier surround.

The no AA in T1 kinda sucks but hydras do rape a bunch if they are in a ball. Downside is they can be outrun so damn easily. I just wish I could harass more with overseers slowing down production. I am just not a micro/macro pro yet and I don't want to be that hardcore to even try and get better. In the end, I just want MOAR PORTRAITS!

[Falaras]

T1 Burrow is an interesting idea, aren't tunneling claws T2 anyways though (I honestly don't know). Would also force detectors if you saw Roaches and since Terran almost never get Detection at least until a Spire is thrown down it could help in the early game since you would be losing minerals on turrets or a fast raven + 300 minerals per scan.

[tol]

I think commentators always casting that terran is a very strong and multi-dimensional at the moment and zerg is a little lacking has a lot to do with it. People always flock to the "overpowered" side. Players going to watch youtube videos and seeing how many of the top players are playing terran coupled with the fact that terran feels like a more complete race at the moment is fueling a lot of the debate.

I mostly roll random but I like zerg the best. I think they are lacking a little bit at the moment but figuring out how to solve that issue is pretty hard.

I rarely use burrow because by the time you can get it, you've just wasted minerals and time that could have gone to building a spire for some harassment.

[Kaylia]

I rarely use burrow because by the time you can get it, you've just wasted minerals and time that could have gone to building a spire for some harassment.

Burrow is really not that bad. Sure, that's one less muta, but you can save so many units with it it usually pay for itself pretty fast. It's particularly great for infestor if you're fighting a terran. It's pretty useful to save your drone as well if you get attacked (you will usually save more drone this way unless you're fighting a slow ground unit).

Also, burrowed baneling work really well early game against terran's ball. More often then not, burrow will save you more then 2-3 banelings by letting you explode all of them in range.

Late game, most protoss have observer and human get raven (or scan everything), but early game, you can definitively make it worthwhile.



[edit]
Burrowing a zergling in their natural expand is pretty nice as well. They will be forced to scan it before expanding, and waste a precious mules in the process (not to mention you know exactly when they get their expand, but an overlord should do that anyway).

[Kaylia]

My last post made me wonder about something. How many baneling does it take to kill a freshly built nexus/cc (let's say 5-10sec after it start)? Burrowing 2 baneling at the edge of the building placement and blast them when the building is started would get you a free kill worth 400 minerals. If the terran lift off his cc, you can still get a few scv down later, but it seem like you could destroy a nexus easily with that.

[Falaras]

I didn't say that Kaylia : x

[Kaylia]

oops...quote accident.

[Misuicide]

Kaylia, i think it would be better to have burrowed banes in the mineral line, cause when they tranfser SCV/probe to saturate, it would be the perfect time to blow them up. thats a LOT of worker kills, and worth more then killing a nexus

[geno]

Kaylia, i think it would be better to have burrowed banes in the mineral line, cause when they tranfser SCV/probe to saturate, it would be the perfect time to blow them up. thats a LOT of worker kills, and worth more then killing a nexus

I agree here, if you are attempting a trick like this you are better off going for the workers. Especially because of how often Terrans end up just building their CC in their base and just floating it out.

[synistar]

I kinda had to laugh at this random 3v3 the other day where opponents were tri zerg and they all went speedlings. One of them had the lulz to get 10 speedlings in a mineral line, bane them up, and kaboom. course it is preventable but it was full of lulz.

Tunneling claws is T2 along with speed. I'd think it would be interesting to move a few upgrades down to T1. Since all zerg get at T1/1.5 is speedlings and banelings and unupgraded roaches, whereas terran get stim, shield, conc, and nitro. Course toss gets screwed and only has Warp gate and hallucination, but warpgate's effect is almost a necessity for the later part of the game anyways. Maybe tossing zerg a bone with 1 more T1/1.5 upgrade, either burrow or speed-roaches could do something to help the dreadful zerg early game.

[Kaylia]

Kaylia, i think it would be better to have burrowed banes in the mineral line, cause when they tranfser SCV/probe to saturate, it would be the perfect time to blow them up. thats a LOT of worker kills, and worth more then killing a nexus

The main issue is that you need a lot of baneling to kills all the probes (around 6-8) and getting a clean hit isnt as easy. While I agree the gain is bigger, the probability he build turret/canon, or fly by with an observer before he saturate his expand seem high. I'm not sure I would be willing to put too much money into a strats that rely on random factor.

On the other side, 2 banelings alone isn't a huge investment if it fail, and 160dmg is enough to kill a freshly made structure. If the terran come in with lift off, then you could hit as many scv as you can.

[Kaylia]

Why cant you get league achievement against computer anymore? I'm pretty sure i got a ton of them with syntex, but right now, its not working with GRT

[geno]

League achievements work if you start a coop vs AI game, but they have never worked starting a custom against a computer. Unless they changed this and I missed it.

[Kaylia]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was coop, but I just read it doesnt work for archon, so idk, maybe that's why (counter was stuck at 0 thought)

[Zhais]

Weeee ranked up to Silver. I still suck at the game however