Starcraft 2: 8 Medivac drop

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Eh, that happens.

a few small tips:
1) don't go pure air against zerg. They can make hydras way faster than you make your air units, and they'll just kill you.
you can switch to air if you see he's going muta/ling, or if he has swarmhost-centered builds, but air just from the beginning is pretty hard.

I wouldn't say that, a couple of early VR's and an oracle can really shut down expos and ruin his day before he has a chance to counter effectively.

2) scout
I would also say harass, but quite frankly i have a hard time properly harassing, so just focus on scouting :P
Scouting is easy if you remember to do it.
- send a probe whenever you want (after the 1st pylon, after the gate, whatever you want)
-as soon as the cybercore finishes get a mothership core and/or a stalker.
Send the mothership core behind their mineral line to do some harass. Also you'll see some of his buildings and stuff like that. (if he's terran, you can see how many marines he sends after your core)
Maybe send a stalker to check out if he has a third? a natural? just run away as soon as you see what you wanted to see, he likely doesn't have anything faster than your stalker.
-Sentries have Free hallucination upgrade!
Periodically select a sentry, press C X to create a phoenix and send it in to see his army, bases and buildings =)

Of course, scouting is only half the battle. The other half is knowing what has been presented actually means in terms of what you should do.

Also, expand more and earlier. if you have the mothership core you can hold most early pushes with photon overcharge, don't worry.

Agreed. He who turtles, gets out-macro'd.

[Gandariel]

Just to make it clear:
early game air harassment is totally viable. very early, oracles, phoenixes, voidrays, they all work well.

The point is, if you just add stargates and keep making air units, the enemy is gonna swarm you with Hydras and kill you.
He may get air units of his own, but Hydras are cheaper, and cost-effective against all air units in the game.

Mothership core is rather slow, yes, but can work ok. I'll check if i have a replay to show you what i mean

And yes, Free hallucination is AMAZING. Get the free scouts from phoenixes, scare your opponent with a couple extra immortals or just get free meat shields: Archons have 360 life and don't get extra damage from almost anything, Immortals have that special shield thing.

Remember that hallucinations take double damage from everything (so hallucinated immortals take max 20 shield damage from an attack).

Before an engagement, if you have time, get a few hallucinations and put them in front of the army, you'll absorb the first shots for free.

EDIT: Oh, and if you Hallucinate zealots or stalkers you get two of them =)

[Artanis]

And yes, Free hallucination is AMAZING. Get the free scouts from phoenixes, scare your opponent with a couple extra immortals or just get free meat shields: Archons have 360 life and don't get extra damage from almost anything, Immortals have that special shield thing.

Also, if you ever find yourself up against IdrA, you can hallucinate a bunch of Void Rays and make him rage quit

[Gandariel]

Also, Bronze League Heroes is a good way to see some of the more common blunders found, and some pro tips from Husky how to avoid them.

i watched a couple of those. The tips he gives are reeeeeally basic. like "make orbital commands" or "get warp gate" but still useful, i suppose

[Thiyr]

The point is, if you just add stargates and keep making air units, the enemy is gonna swarm you with Hydras and kill you.
He may get air units of his own, but Hydras are cheaper, and cost-effective against all air units in the game.

Not entirely true, but true enough for most practical purposes. Hydras are actually not cost-effective vs carriers. The trick there is that they're really TIME effective. Carriers take so terribly long to build that you can't get enough of them without a lot of time. But if you have time, resources, and an inability to make the swap to colossi, well, THEN carriers are a solid choice. (They're also a good unit to mix in late game if you've got to infrastructure up already. Seems like every time I make them and get into a giant army-on-army fight, I limp away with 3 carriers after both armies cancel out. Sturdy ol' boats.)

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Just to make it clear:
early game air harassment is totally viable. very early, oracles, phoenixes, voidrays, they all work well.

The point is, if you just add stargates and keep making air units, the enemy is gonna swarm you with Hydras and kill you.
He may get air units of his own, but Hydras are cheaper, and cost-effective against all air units in the game.

Yes and no. If you build four VR's and take down his expo and his main hatch/lair/hive, you've pretty much prevented him from building Hydras in the first place. Send an oracle along to snipe drones and queens, and it's pretty much GG if the zerg doesn't scout it and start bulding Hydras before those VR's come knocking.

[Karoht]

Also, if you ever find yourself up against IdrA, you can hallucinate a bunch of Void Rays and make him rage quit

IdrA quit.
Like, for good.
Like, almost a year ago.
Mostly because he's been kicked off Team Liquid several times, he got kicked off another team, and without a team to support him with residual, no sponsor wanted to touch him, and he wasn't even good enough to reach qualifiers on his own.
Even with the IdrA fanclub defending his jerkwad behavior to fellow players, his streaming audience, his fanclub, his team, etc, the world eventually shrugged him off. And without the backers, he had no livelyhood, so he rage-quit StarCraft, and went and got a job. I hear he's working fast food.

TL:DR-Don't be a douchebag player or the world eventually drops you like a hot potato.

[Artanis]

IdrA quit.
Like, for good.
Like, almost a year ago.
Mostly because he's been kicked off Team Liquid several times, he got kicked off another team, and without a team to support him with residual, no sponsor wanted to touch him, and he wasn't even good enough to reach qualifiers on his own.
Even with the IdrA fanclub defending his jerkwad behavior to fellow players, his streaming audience, his fanclub, his team, etc, the world eventually shrugged him off. And without the backers, he had no livelyhood, so he rage-quit StarCraft, and went and got a job. I hear he's working fast food.

TL:DR-Don't be a douchebag player or the world eventually drops you like a hot potato.

It was supposed to be a joke

[Hiro Protagonest]

IdrA quit.
Like, for good.
Like, almost a year ago.
Mostly because he's been kicked off Team Liquid several times, he got kicked off another team, and without a team to support him with residual, no sponsor wanted to touch him, and he wasn't even good enough to reach qualifiers on his own.
Even with the IdrA fanclub defending his jerkwad behavior to fellow players, his streaming audience, his fanclub, his team, etc, the world eventually shrugged him off. And without the backers, he had no livelyhood, so he rage-quit StarCraft, and went and got a job. I hear he's working fast food.

TL:DR-Don't be a douchebag player or the world eventually drops you like a hot potato.

...Not sure if sarcastic.

Isn't IdrA an analytical commentator?

[Artanis]

So Lucifron vs. Dayshi was awesome.

Spoiler

Show

Just for fun, Dayshi decided to go Random instead of Terran, and kept winding up with Zerg. That went...poorly for him.

My favorite moment was in game 2 when Lucifron moved out, and one of the commentators went, "Well, Lucifron is moving out with units, which is a pretty good composition against Dayshi's no units".

[Legoshrimp]

IdrA quit.
Like, for good.
Like, almost a year ago.
Mostly because he's been kicked off Team Liquid several times, he got kicked off another team, and without a team to support him with residual, no sponsor wanted to touch him, and he wasn't even good enough to reach qualifiers on his own.
Even with the IdrA fanclub defending his jerkwad behavior to fellow players, his streaming audience, his fanclub, his team, etc, the world eventually shrugged him off. And without the backers, he had no livelyhood, so he rage-quit StarCraft, and went and got a job. I hear he's working fast food.

TL:DR-Don't be a douchebag player or the world eventually drops you like a hot potato.

Idra was never on team liquid(he has been banned from the teamliquid.net forums multiple times though). He was kicked from Evil Geniuses less than 6 months ago, he streams/and does coaching regularly getting decent view counts, and has done some commentating.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Idra was never on team liquid(he has been banned from the teamliquid.net forums multiple times though). He was kicked from Evil Geniuses less than 6 months ago, he streams/and does coaching regularly getting decent view counts, and has done some commentating.

Oh yeah, IdrA definitely still plays too. His life isn't some big disaster because he got kicked off the team he was on for bad behavior. He's still really good at this game and has a following of PewDiePie fans.

[Tectonic Robot]

Wait, people who like Pewdiepie like this IdrA fella?

[Hiro Protagonest]

Wait, people who like Pewdiepie like this IdrA fella?

IdrA's main schtick as a player is for cursing at everything and calling it OP. That's a magnet for the type of people who like PDP.

[Kyeudo]

IdrA's main schtick as a player is for cursing at everything and calling it OP.

Some of the things I liked when I used to watch his games was an almost prescient ability to time things.

*Idra has nothing but drones*
*Attack moves out*
*Roaches spawn*
*Attack gets killed by roaches*

[Gandariel]

Opening SCII these days:

" Get back to school with 50% off SCII! "

... Wait, what?

[Gandariel]

Update on my part: if anyone cares

got to number 1 gold, still have a lot of bonus points pool, i have a pretty good win ratio. Expecting a promotion soon, if i manage to play these days.

I went mass voidrays against a couple Toss players who ragequitted since "they were so much better than me but voidrays are so OP" (i checked, i have better macro too :P). Still, voidrays are friggin' good.

Oh, also one time i got cannon rushed. I just rushed my mothership core and a stalker, then built a second nexus just in case i lost my first one during the cannon rush. i waited out and had some probes long distance mine for a while until i got the Photon Overcharge. When i finally got it, i was easily able to destroy every cannon. (i could attack them with MSC and stalker too, since cannons targeted my nexus due to higher DPS). AND i had an expo up.
All in all, i didn't overreact, i only lost a couple probes,a zealot, and some mining time.
Then, i scouted with an hallucinated phoenix, scouted him going for robo and then colossus, i went double stargates and killed him with voidrays.

I also played a few arcade games: Monobattles are still fun, Desert strike and Nexus wars are long but cool.

Oh, an amazing arcade game is called Micro Tournament. You challenge each other in a long series of micro battles. roaches vs stalkers, zealots vs zealots, ling/bane battles, a lot of them.
It's pretty fun, sadly not a lot of people plays that, so you might have to get some friends to play with you.

[Karoht]

@Starcraft Arcade
StarCraft Universe
Look it up!

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I start off a match with glhf. He responds with 'lol n00b u r ded just qq already'. Ahh, one of those matches. Right, so early scout, because we already know where this is going.

Sure enough, forge and no gate. Right, so that means he's going to put the Pylon just outside of sight range of my command center, where he can put a couple of cannons also out of sight. By this time, my rax was already down, of course. Delayed gas an orbital command.

Oh, and apparently I must be map hacking because there is NO WAY I could've had vision where he put the pylon... despite the fact that I saw the probe head over in that direction, and my SCV spotted forge and no gate in his base.

But clearly, I must have hacked to have known he was putting a pylon down there. You know, where EVERY cannon-rusher puts their pylon.

And because I knew there was going to be a cannon rush, I had an early marine come out to deal with it, delaying my gas and orbital command. Then once I got my orbital command up, I got an engi for +1 attack, a couple more rax, and dropped a turret back behind my mineral line. Because the natural follow-up for a failed cannon rush is going to be a DT rush. Yes, I've delayed my expo, but what the heck, I mostly suck at SC2 anyways.

Right, so I start up my 3 rax, one with a reactor cranking out 'rines and the other two dedicated to marauders. Oh, and a Factory to crank out a couple of widow mines.

Here comes the DT drop. Oh, and then the conversion over to power to warpgate in more DT's. Unfortunately, the widow mines roflstomped them before the bio ball could react.

Of course, now it's PROOF! PROOF! that I was haxxing, because there's NO WAY I could've known he was going to DT rush me. Because that's such an original idea that NO ONE could have predicted it!!!

Oh, and I was resource hacking as well, because NO ONE can have 100 supply army at the mere 15 minute mark...

I mean... come on. Yes, I suck at SC2. I fail horribly. But even I know what a Cannon Rush is, and what a DT rush is, and how to defeat them both.

At that point, he ragequit, claiming he was going to report me.

Granted, if he had just gone 4gate, I could've still probably taken him simply because I had maxed out my SCV's on the one base and was going to expo after his next push, simply because terran bio-ball is just that good. I also had a couple of mines at my front ramp. But he wouldn't have been able to go Colossi and I doubt he had the micro for storming, which would've been my only two real concerns.

Maybe I should submit it to HuskyReplays for submission to Bronze League Heroes.

[The Glyphstone]

Doooo eeeeeeeet.

Failed cheese, twice, plus poor-sportsman raeg and accusations of hacking? That's like the perfect trifecta of fail all in one glorious match.

Or at least share the video with us.

[Karoht]

I feel bad for the Blizzard guys who have to sort through reports like that.

I mean, we all know that kid didn't report anything, but sheesh, the number of reports they probably get like that a day is probably absurd.

[Artanis]

Maybe I should submit it to HuskyReplays for submission to Bronze League Heroes.

DOITNOW DOITNOW DOITNOW DOITNOW!

I feel bad for the Blizzard guys who have to sort through reports like that.

I mean, we all know that kid didn't report anything, but sheesh, the number of reports they probably get like that a day is probably absurd.

They probably just ignore everything below Gold. If somebody hacks and is still that bad, they probably aren't much of an issue

[Traab]

DOITNOW DOITNOW DOITNOW DOITNOW!



They probably just ignore everything below Gold. If somebody hacks and is still that bad, they probably aren't much of an issue

Thats. . . actually a good point. I admit I dont do multiplayer so im not sure how it works, but dont you auto upgrade according to your win/loss record? So yeah, if you are doing all sorts of fun hacks and still cant get past gold, you are a very sad little man.

[Artanis]

Thats. . . actually a good point. I admit I dont do multiplayer so im not sure how it works, but dont you auto upgrade according to your win/loss record? So yeah, if you are doing all sorts of fun hacks and still cant get past gold, you are a very sad little man.

It's based on wins and losses, but not the win/loss record itself. My understanding of it is that it uses a rating that is similar in concept to Elo to match you up with people around your supposed skill level, and puts you in a league based on that rating. If you keep winning, your rating goes up, and you get promoted if your rating goes high enough. Likewise, if you keep losing, your rating goes down, and you eventually get demoted.

[Gandariel]

Yeah, i'd like to see the video too.
I almost never lose to cannon rushes anymore, but when i started playing and i lost to them, that frustrated me SO much.

Oh, also. Once, in a team game, some a**hole in my team wanted to troll us, so he took all of his workers and began attacking my bases. I couldn't block it and had a hard time killing his units because i had to manually do it.
I had randomed zerg, and i kept losing all three hatcheries, my buildings were losing health because no creep.. i just quit after a while.

[Silverraptor]

I start off a match with glhf. He responds with 'lol n00b u r ded just qq already'. Ahh, one of those matches. Right, so early scout, because we already know where this is going.

Sure enough, forge and no gate. Right, so that means he's going to put the Pylon just outside of sight range of my command center, where he can put a couple of cannons also out of sight. By this time, my rax was already down, of course. Delayed gas an orbital command.

Oh, and apparently I must be map hacking because there is NO WAY I could've had vision where he put the pylon... despite the fact that I saw the probe head over in that direction, and my SCV spotted forge and no gate in his base.

But clearly, I must have hacked to have known he was putting a pylon down there. You know, where EVERY cannon-rusher puts their pylon.

And because I knew there was going to be a cannon rush, I had an early marine come out to deal with it, delaying my gas and orbital command. Then once I got my orbital command up, I got an engi for +1 attack, a couple more rax, and dropped a turret back behind my mineral line. Because the natural follow-up for a failed cannon rush is going to be a DT rush. Yes, I've delayed my expo, but what the heck, I mostly suck at SC2 anyways.

Right, so I start up my 3 rax, one with a reactor cranking out 'rines and the other two dedicated to marauders. Oh, and a Factory to crank out a couple of widow mines.

Here comes the DT drop. Oh, and then the conversion over to power to warpgate in more DT's. Unfortunately, the widow mines roflstomped them before the bio ball could react.

Of course, now it's PROOF! PROOF! that I was haxxing, because there's NO WAY I could've known he was going to DT rush me. Because that's such an original idea that NO ONE could have predicted it!!!

Oh, and I was resource hacking as well, because NO ONE can have 100 supply army at the mere 15 minute mark...

I mean... come on. Yes, I suck at SC2. I fail horribly. But even I know what a Cannon Rush is, and what a DT rush is, and how to defeat them both.

At that point, he ragequit, claiming he was going to report me.

Granted, if he had just gone 4gate, I could've still probably taken him simply because I had maxed out my SCV's on the one base and was going to expo after his next push, simply because terran bio-ball is just that good. I also had a couple of mines at my front ramp. But he wouldn't have been able to go Colossi and I doubt he had the micro for storming, which would've been my only two real concerns.

Maybe I should submit it to HuskyReplays for submission to Bronze League Heroes.

Post the replay for us too.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

DAMNIT!!!!

Okay, I run Mint15, so I use WINE and PlayOnLinux to play SC2. Apparently the game file was saved on a virtual drive which was then removed when I closed the instance. I'm searching my hard drive for traces of where that save file went to, even scouring the temp folders. I've tried .wine//dosdevices/c:/Program Files, and I've tried .PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/SC2/drive_c/SC2, but the folders there yield no game file. I even went to .PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/SC2/drive_c/users/Public/ApplicationData/SC2 and no such luck.

Perhaps if I keep sucking at SC2 long enough, I'll run into him, or one like him.

It was particularly funny because when I asked him if he was IdrA, the guy stated (and pardon if I paraphrase) that he was a big fan of IrdA. Go fig.

[Tectonic Robot]

DAMNIT!!!!

Okay, I run Mint15, so I use WINE and PlayOnLinux to play SC2. Apparently the game file was saved on a virtual drive which was then removed when I closed the instance. I'm searching my hard drive for traces of where that save file went to, even scouring the temp folders. I've tried .wine//dosdevices/c:/Program Files, and I've tried .PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/SC2/drive_c/SC2, but the folders there yield no game file. I even went to .PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/SC2/drive_c/users/Public/ApplicationData/SC2 and no such luck.

Perhaps if I keep sucking at SC2 long enough, I'll run into him, or one like him.

It was particularly funny because when I asked him if he was IdrA, the guy stated (and pardon if I paraphrase) that he was a big fan of IrdA. Go fig.

You faiiiileeeeed ussssss.

Faaaaaaaaaaiiiiiileeeeeeed ussssssss.

You must pay the great Starcraft II discussion thread a tribute of some sort, something replay-ish, maybe, I dunno, or some sort of custom map, we're flexible.

[Zevox]

Wait, hold on, how does this game's matchmaking work? I just played a couple of games today, and got paired with gold players both times. I'm in bronze, shouldn't it only pair me with other bronze players? Or at most maybe silver? What the hell?

[Kyeudo]

Wait, hold on, how does this game's matchmaking work? I just played a couple of games today, and got paired with gold players both times. I'm in bronze, shouldn't it only pair me with other bronze players? Or at most maybe silver? What the hell?

Your MMR is a secret value and is used to figure who you should play next. It is not the same as your ladder ranking. There is also a window around it, so you can get paired above and below your rank.

If you have been on a winning streak, your MMR may have risen, but the game does not move you to a new league until your MMR stabilizes somewhat (you start losing and winning again in roughly equal proportions). If you are playing Gold players, you may actually be being considered for getting moved to Gold league. It is theoretically possible to skip leagues, although I haven't heard of it.