Starcraft 2: 8 Medivac drop

[Tectonic Robot]

Broodlords were a thing, apparently, in the WoL days. That's what I hear, at least.

I had a battle with Galandriel! I learned that you should probably have something by the eight minute mark. ^^''

[Silverraptor]

Broodlord infestor is no longer a thing!? Awwwwww, yeah! Maybe I should start playing again!

[Gandariel]

Brood lords were ALWAYS used in WoL.
In HotS, not really that much. And i really have no idea why, brood lords are really a pain in the ass to deal with.

As protoss, you either have to have an overwhelming amount of stuff, or use Void rays to defend them. LOTS of blink stalkers kind of work too, but i don't really like having too many of them, especially towards the lategame.


Oh, and to tectonicbot, as i said to you: You MUST either have units or defences. Simply wall off the 2nd ramp with your first few buildings, leaving only a small gap. Close that gap with one or two units set on Hold position (select the unit and press H) and you're set. No scouting, no zergling/hellion harass.
(Of course it's easier if you go terran, you can just wall off completely and raise depos)


In other news, anybody wanna play some games with me? I haven't played in months, and i think my level right now is around gold, maybe a little more. But i'd love to play some more.

The only person on these forums i played with is Acanous, if any of you played him. I had better macro than him (but he had better micro) and i won more than half the games, he only beat me when he did very early rushes or that damn banshee build of his :P

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Or the long forgotten and least used capital ship ever that is never used by anyone ever, the brood lord.

Vikings eat them for breakfast.

[Gandariel]

Ok, after a few months of not playing i decided to play somegames between yesterday and today.

First game, i got stupidly rushed and lost to a bronze. Got placed into silver =(
(used to being gold or plat)

After that, i won 6/6 of the other games i played, with good games, and nice comebacks. I hope i'll get promoted soon!

I MASSACRED a guy who was going mass void rays using storms. they clump up SO much and have terrible acceleration :)

Some games were pretty normal.
The last i played, i'm really proud of it.

I barely held a hydra timing attack, lost my third twice, and got 20+kills on three immortals against someone who only built hydras for most of the game.
Anybody care to watch it and maybe give me some feedback? :)

http://drop.sc/359530

Considerations:

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First, the cannons at the natural. Trust me, it WORKS if you scout hatch first. This time it didn't go so well, i missed a cancel and misplaced a cannon, and still i managed to delay him a lot. i didn't do my best at all, and if i look up my replays maybe i can find you some in which i do it right; And, this is a perfect example of NOT cheese. it's just punishing the enemy for going hatch first. anyways, back to the game.

The rest is pretty straightforward, i didn't harass much, i didn't build enough gateways, i didn't put forward pylons. I did well with upgrades though, and i think i got the right unit composition and decent macro and micro.

i talked to the enemy afterwards, he said he was trying to win with that first 1/1 timing push: he said it hits right before the Protoss has Colossi. too bad i didn't make any ;)

[Gandariel]

Update: after winning 9/9 i got promoted to Gold :P

[Tectonic Robot]

I downloaded your replay, will watch it later!

[Legoshrimp]

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So TaeJa just build some battlecrusiers versus innovation.

[Artanis]

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So TaeJa just build some battlecrusiers versus innovation.

Where? Dreamhack?

[iyaerP]

Yup, and it was awesome. That series was a joy to watch. High level TvT is the best mirror match.

[Gandariel]

Yeah, TvT is fun. Can be boring when two armies with sieged tanks stare at each other for five minutes waiting for the other to unsiege, but otherwise cool =)

Btw, i have a question about APM.
I don't really care that much for them, but i just wanted to know mine.

Point is, for the first 3-4 minutes my APM is at.. 20?
I mean, i do everything i'm supposed to do, but there's only so much you can do.. and i refuse to give useless orders over and over just to keep the apm high.
Does that affect my overall APM score in the end?

In most games i played my apm is around 70 (from the score screen).
Then i checked that game replay i uploaded a few posts back, and it says my apm is 98. (and the score screen for the same game said 70 or so)

Is that possible? which one is wrong? Should my actual apm be higher, considering that i do nothing during the beginning of the game?

EDIT: Checked again, now my "average apm" is 100something, and i still get 70 or so in the score screen. Blizzard, wtf?

[Artanis]

FINALLY got to watch the Dreamhack finals game 1. Bizarrely, the rest of the series started going up on YouTube within an hour or two of it ending, but it wasn't until this morning that those same channels put up game 1.

Some thoughts on an aspect of game 1:

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Battlecruisers are badass. It looked like they kicked the crap out of Vikings cost-for-cost, supply-for-supply, and time-for-time even when you factored in Reactors. An air unit doing that to what are more or less anti-air specialists* is pretty damned impressive. However, the fact that they're countered** by something as quick and cheap as Widow Mines is a very strong entry in the list of reasons why nobody uses BCs.


*Seriously, how often do you see Vikings land?

**Yeah, I know Innovation was getting desperate by that point and they didn't work that well for the most part, but if they do well enough for the WCS points leader to so much as consider them...yeah.

Btw, i have a question about APM.
I don't really care that much for them, but i just wanted to know mine.

Point is, for the first 3-4 minutes my APM is at.. 20?
I mean, i do everything i'm supposed to do, but there's only so much you can do.. and i refuse to give useless orders over and over just to keep the apm high.
Does that affect my overall APM score in the end?

In most games i played my apm is around 70 (from the score screen).
Then i checked that game replay i uploaded a few posts back, and it says my apm is 98. (and the score screen for the same game said 70 or so)

Is that possible? which one is wrong? Should my actual apm be higher, considering that i do nothing during the beginning of the game?

EDIT: Checked again, now my "average apm" is 100something, and i still get 70 or so in the score screen. Blizzard, wtf?

I figure it's probably best to look at relative APM. If somebody has double your APM, then they have double your APM, regardless of whether the "real" numbers are 1 vs. 2 or 20 vs. 40 or 150 vs. 300.

Also, they started some time ago recording "EPM", or Effective Actions per Minute to try to weed out some of the setting-a-rally-point-fifty-times stuff. You almost never see it though, since it probably came out to pretty similar ratios as "regular" APM.


On a tangentially-related note:
I saw a Scarlett game once where she briefly spiked over 700 APM for a moment. They were showing picture-in-picture of the two players' hands at the time, and hers were basically a blur

[Gandariel]

LOL.

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Oh, and fun fact about Battlecruisers: They have 3 points of natural armor, plus whatever upgrades you have. Vikings do 2 shots for 6+4 damage.
Depending on upgrades, Vikings are actually not that good against BCs.

Well, i guess i won't care much for APM, since it's not really an indication of a player's skill.

Today i played a bit, i won several games thanks to High Templars: Apart from the usual storming enemies and killing them, I feedback'd 6 banshees and 2 ravens in a row to win a game, and a mixture of Oracles and Phoenixes to win another. SO satisfying.

High Templars are AMAZING. Plus they can morph into Archons, which are not exactly the best unit ever, but help with mutas, do decent splash damage and make the HT useful in the battle even after having spent his mana.

The only things that resist both HTs and Archons are stuff like Ultras, Thors, Carrier and Tempest. (and roaches, to a degree).

The "by the book" counter of the HT is supposedly the Ghost, but for some reason Terran players seldom use them. (a shame actually, the EMP thing is cool vs protoss, and nukes are more viable than you'd think).


To sum up, HTs are awesome. And DTs are great too, and air is very viable as well.
All protoss players should stop making robo bays and mindlessly pressing C every game. BOYCOTT THE SPACE GIRAFFES!

[ShneekeyTheLost]

High Templars are AMAZING. Plus they can morph into Archons, which are not exactly the best unit ever, but help with mutas, do decent splash damage and make the HT useful in the battle even after having spent his mana.

The only things that resist both HTs and Archons are stuff like Ultras, Thors, Carrier and Tempest. (and roaches, to a degree).

The "by the book" counter of the HT is supposedly the Ghost, but for some reason Terran players seldom use them. (a shame actually, the EMP thing is cool vs protoss, and nukes are more viable than you'd think).


To sum up, HTs are awesome. And DTs are great too, and air is very viable as well.

Eh, I dunno about nukes, it's too easy to detect these days. It's the EMP's and the Snipes that make them so good. A ghost can snipe an HT down really fast, and EMP's are good against clusters of them.

I agree, they are under-used, probably because they require a whole 'nother building to make them. Kinda the same problem as with BC's.

[Gandariel]

I think people don't give enough credit to nukes.
Imagine a random game, you have three bases, you hear NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED.
You have 20 seconds.
Check your army first, move it around a bit. Ok, it's not there.
Now check your main. is there a red dot? on the workers? the buildings?
You have to check your natural and third as well.
Ghost is likely placed just a couple squares away from the sight range of your static defense. Maybe, even when you see him, your army isn't in place to kill it and you have to make your probes escape?
Do you have any scans to use? do you want to burn scans which may or may not find a ghost?

I am pretty convinced that responding to a nuke is pretty hard.
Especially if you consider that, APM-wise, all the Terran player did was press N. In those 20 seconds the terran can drop you or try a frontal attack. How good are you at multitask?

EDIT: And of course there are those fun "whole army killed with a nuke" things, but THOSE are hard to land.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I think people don't give enough credit to nukes.
Imagine a random game, you have three bases, you hear NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED.
You have 20 seconds.
Check your army first, move it around a bit. Ok, it's not there.
Now check your main. is there a red dot? on the workers? the buildings?
You have to check your natural and third as well.
Ghost is likely placed just a couple squares away from the sight range of your static defense. Maybe, even when you see him, your army isn't in place to kill it and you have to make your probes escape?
Do you have any scans to use? do you want to burn scans which may or may not find a ghost?

I am pretty convinced that responding to a nuke is pretty hard.
Especially if you consider that, APM-wise, all the Terran player did was press N. In those 20 seconds the terran can drop you or try a frontal attack. How good are you at multitask?

EDIT: And of course there are those fun "whole army killed with a nuke" things, but THOSE are hard to land.

Move your army, you don't need to look. Check whichever base a ghost CAN get to which also has enough harvesters to be worth the nuke. By the time Ghosts come out, your Main is mined out, so it's either your natural or third, and generally the defenses around your natural are enough that a ghost couldn't get through, that leaves the Third, or maybe a fourth. If you've got a full mining base up somewhere out of the way, that's probably the one.

It's not really that hard determining where the nuke is going to go, because it has to be a) immobile, so they don't just move, b) accessible by stealth, and c) painful enough that a nuke is worth the cost. It really makes it very simple to guess where it is going very rapidly.

Against protoss, you are NOT going to get away with it. By this time, he WILL have obs and blinkstalkers will murder the ghost. Against Terran, you likely won't, because he will have scans and unless he's gone mech he will have the mobility to get you. Zerg might be the only one who you might get lucky with, but only because few zerg players bother with spore colonies, so their only stealth detection are Overseers. Of course, you are only going to get away with that once before he stations detectors at every base.

[Gandariel]

But even then, one spore per base (or really, any amount of spores, turrets or cannons) isn't enough when Nukes have higher range than a Spore's sight range.

I wish i played Terran at a decent level so i could prove it to you guys. If any of you are terran, i really encourage you to try this. Also, nobody really uses nukes, so nobody is really ready to react perfectly.

And yeah, in a vacuum you can respond to a nuke. But can you do it while the enemy is dropping you? or making a frontal push? lots of people in plat and lower can't properly respond to two contemporary attacks.

It is really not that easy. Maybe pros don't use them much because other pros can respond perfectly, but us mortals? i'm pretty sure they work better

[Karoht]

Nukes are best used:
-To break/cripple a wall off and then move in with an army.
-To harass/misdirect enemy attention.
-When you can land multiple nukes back to back, in the same or different locations.
-When you can land multiple nukes at once, in the same or different locations.
-Against a Terran relying on scans.
-Against a Zerg who doesn't have any Overseers.
-Against a Protoss who for some bizarre reason doesn't have any Observers, or if you've just finished killing his only Observer/s.

Against a Terran, if all they have is scans, it is very easy to bait those scans. Send in a Ghost at a really obvious place, near his army. Scan, dead. Do it again, scan dead. Now start dropping nukes, somewhere else entirely. If that nuke lands, drop another one (same spot or elsewhere). Chances are good that if the Terran has 3 bases they probably only have enough energy for 3 scans, so the first two baits should be enough, the third might tell him where the nuke will drop but chances are won't be able to react in time, or will scan near the main army (where you have no ghosts at all) out of reflex. Be sure to factor the cost of 2 bait ghosts and 3 or more nukes into your consideration when planning to go nuke.

If you can pull off a Medivac Drop or two at the same time as you have your enemy searching for your nuke point and reacting, all the better.

IE-Enemy has 3 bases.
Position/bait with Ghosts.
Nuke A
Nuke B, Drop at A or C.
Nuke C or B, Drop at A or B.
Obviously, don't nuke ON the spot you just dropped or plan to drop.
Factor in main army as necessary.
Timing is everything.
Happy Hunting.

[Tectonic Robot]

I saw a cool LiquidTLO game where he dropped like five nukes. He did while he was attacking an enemy mining base with his army, and putting the nukes on ramps so that if the protoss tried to climb the ramp, they'd get nuked, and if they didn't, they'd lose the base to Marines and Marauders.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

But even then, one spore per base (or really, any amount of spores, turrets or cannons) isn't enough when Nukes have higher range than a Spore's sight range.

Yea, but unless you want to nuke the forward detector building (which I will trade ALL DAY LONG against nukes), then it doesn't matter what the range of the building's sight is vs the range of the nuke, it's a matter of the range of the building's sight vs the range to a worthwhile target.

You might get caught once with a nuke, after that they will have too many feelers out for you to get away with it again. Granted, you might be able to force a panic reaction and spend too many resources on detector buildings, but it's one of those sucker punch moves that are only effective because no one serious bothers with them.

And yeah, in a vacuum you can respond to a nuke. But can you do it while the enemy is dropping you? or making a frontal push? lots of people in plat and lower can't properly respond to two contemporary attacks.

However, it is an attack that can be fended off with static defenses. Or at least, it forces you to deal with said static defenses before you can use your nuke effectively. Which means YOU are the one making a multi-prong attack, and risk defeat in detail.

It is really not that easy. Maybe pros don't use them much because other pros can respond perfectly, but us mortals? i'm pretty sure they work better

Perhaps you should play more terran and you will begin to realize why it really isn't all that good. Nukes cost a good chunk of resources *per shot*. And they take a long while to be rebuilt. They aren't as good as you think they are.

[Kyeudo]

So, decided to play some StarCraft (wow, auto-correct knows how to capitalize StarCraft) tonight after being away for so long. Got murdered twice for noob mistakes and was placed into Silver League.

I gave it another try, this time doing the current Funday Monday challenge (can't really fall any farther, right?), and ended up with this gem of a replay.

What happens when a worker rush prevents a Terran from building his first supply depot? Apparently crazy happens.

[Artanis]

Three totally unrelated thoughts:

One-

I know the discussion on cheese petered out a little bit ago, but I think I've come up with the start of a rough definition for it. I'd like to emphasize "start of" and "rough": this is a starting point for coming up with something, and there will never be a black-and-white definition. However, I thought it was an interesting thought exercise. Also, as long as I obey the voice in my head when it tells me to do things like think about and then post this, it doesn't start pestering me to set my co-workers on fire

Cheese (cheez), n.:
A strategy that is difficult or impossible to defeat without the use of a specific response. Cheese usually (but not always) falls into two categories:
1) Strategic cheese: A strategy that gains an advantage by deviating significantly from "standard" play, thereby catching the enemy unawares.
2) Imbalance cheese: A strategy that gains an advantage by leveraging an imbalance in game mechanics, typically in the form of spamming an overpowered unit.

Problems that I already see:
A) Need to word "specific response" so as not to include general, blatantly obvious stuff like needing units that shoot up to fight air units at all.
B) "Standard play" is pretty d*** vague


Two-

Does anybody use Motherships? I don't mean Mothership Cores, which everybody and their dog uses, but the big ones that nobody (except KiWiKaKi, I think) used in WoL either. Seriously, Motherships make BC's seem as ubiquitous as Zerglings by comparison.

Maybe it's just one of those cases where Blizzard has basically said, "yeah, we can't balance this at all levels, so better to be balanced at some and weak at others than balanced at some and OP at others" (which they admit that they do, BTW).


Three-

WCS Hilarity of the Day:

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15:09 - OMG SCV SO OP!!!!!!!1111ELEVEN

[Hiro Protagonest]

Mothership was used sometimes in WoL, but it got nerfed. So now it's never used.

And is that the Funday Monday?

[Kyeudo]

And is that the Funday Monday?

Apparently I only had it half right. You have to worker rush in a team game. Specifically, your first workers must go attack.

[Artanis]

And is that the Funday Monday?

Nah, it's from WCS Europe.

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An SCV got the last hit on a Zealot

[Hiro Protagonest]

Nah, it's from WCS Europe.

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An SCV got the last hit on a Zealot

I meant Kyeudo's game. I made the post before I put that in, so I didn't quote him.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Mothership was used sometimes in WoL, but it got nerfed. So now it's never used.

Yea, it was used in Archon Toilet, but that was about it. When that got nerfed, it was pretty much pointless.

[Kyeudo]

Okay, this is getting weird. Tried a drone rush in a 2v2 match and got this. That's two in a row I've managed to win with a drone rush opening. This is supposed to be stupid and suicidal, but this one features a Terran getting his workers wrecked by poorly-microed drones.

[Gandariel]

@Mothership

Right now the only use i see for a mothership is to hide stuff and stall against Swarm Hosts.

@Cheese. How about this?

A play can be defined cheese when it has a very binary possible outcome:
A cheesy play is, in fact, a very risky play that usually delays several aspects of your build (gas, expansion, tech), but allows you to perform a very strong (or otherwise hard to counter) attack, usually very early in the game.
The outcome is very binary because the attack either wins the game, or is repelled and leaves the player with huge disadvantages because of the aforementioned delays with his macro.
Sometimes a cheesy play can lead to a normal mid and late game, such as when a bunker rush is repelled but at the cost of many enemy workers, but those are not very common scenarios.
Classic cheesy plays are the cannon rush, the 6pool, the proxy 2-rax with bunker rush, worker rushes, proxy 2-gate.

[Artanis]

@Cheese. How about this?

A play can be defined cheese when it has a very binary possible outcome:
A cheesy play is, in fact, a very risky play that usually delays several aspects of your build (gas, expansion, tech), but allows you to perform a very strong (or otherwise hard to counter) attack, usually very early in the game.
The outcome is very binary because the attack either wins the game, or is repelled and leaves the player with huge disadvantages because of the aforementioned delays with his macro.
Sometimes a cheesy play can lead to a normal mid and late game, such as when a bunker rush is repelled but at the cost of many enemy workers, but those are not very common scenarios.
Classic cheesy plays are the cannon rush, the 6pool, the proxy 2-rax with bunker rush, worker rushes, proxy 2-gate.

I thought something along those lines at first, but thought that something with a binary outcome would fall more under the term "All In". There is a LOT of overlap between the two - most cheese is an All In, and many All Ins involve cheese, but there is some stuff that is one but not the other. In particular, a player may get way behind, but then they find a window where they have a brief advantage (such as their 3/3 finishing a little ahead of their opponent's) and seize the opportunity to make a desperate all-or-nothing attack.