Starcraft 2: 8 Medivac drop

[BobVosh]

I'm still at the dnd game. Should be done soon then I'll get on

Edit: omw, getting on

[DarkMemnarch]

The blizzard WCS is going on right now.

here are the links if you want to watch it
http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/TwitchTV
http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/WCS_2
http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/WCS_3
http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/WCS_4

[Mutant Sheep]

Like anyones PLAYING non-Chinese Starcraft this weekend, but session tomorrow! Let's do it!!

[Thiyr]

sadly, as per normal as of late, i shall be out and about. Sorry D:. In reparations, have an interview with Bill Amend about SC2

[BobVosh]

Like anyones PLAYING non-Chinese Starcraft this weekend, but session tomorrow! Let's do it!!

Thanks, I forgot to do the reminder what with work being completely bloody crazy this week. I shall get on early today! I'm going to try and shoot for 3pm central, but I won't make a promise.

Edit: Where are you, you blasted mutant sheep? I got on early for you.

[BobVosh]

What graphics card do you have? I know there were some odd problems with radeons, and maybe the fixes for multiplayer aren't working on the singleplayer.

[BobVosh]

Q – I see nothing but a black screen!
A – There have been multiple reports of black screen issues being related to the use of a Quick Cam webcam. Uninstall the software for the camera in order to resolve the problem.

Only thing I could find, I would recommend the actual tech support part of their forums. http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/13438/

[Mutant Sheep]

Q – I see nothing but a black screen!
A – There have been multiple reports of black screen issues being related to the use of a Quick Cam webcam. Uninstall the software for the camera in order to resolve the problem.

Only thing I could find, I would recommend the actual tech support part of their forums. http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/13438/

gaaah, THE BLIZZARD FORUMS! MY BRAIN IS MELTIIIIIIING.

I had a graphics problem yesterday with a black screen! Everything but the UI was black, but the green command circles would still show up and the cursor was still there. Won with zerg swarms and the minimap.

Editzzz:Thing today??

[Mutant Sheep]

No one else has seemed to post about this, but the Group System coming with HOTS could be far more efficient than our current "Hope somebody is on the chat channel" thing we got going on. I used to be pretty meh about HOTS, but they have me pretty excited now.

[Thiyr]

Ahem.

What the humminahuh?

Those patch notes...just...wow. Fairly big stuff there. My mind just can't wrap itself around that medivac change, tbh. Opinions?

[DarkMemnarch]

Ahem.

What the humminahuh?

Those patch notes...just...wow. Fairly big stuff there. My mind just can't wrap itself around that medivac change, tbh. Opinions?

I think the battle hellions are a bit op because someone did a test where 15 battle hellions were able to beat 396 cracklings.

here is the source
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/7320422402

[Mutant Sheep]

I think the battle hellions are a bit op because someone did a test where 15 battle hellions were able to beat 396 cracklings.

here is the source
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/7320422402

Not suprising. Terran always have the best zerg killing goodies. Just imagine if there were widow mines too.

Ahem.

What the humminahuh?

Those patch notes...just...wow. Fairly big stuff there. My mind just can't wrap itself around that medivac change, tbh. Opinions?

Yeah, now terran might make tech la... wait, they do that for raven spam. Which can now shoot down fungals.
Ultras got a damage buff against non armored, thats good... EXCEPT CHARGE IS GONE. WHY.
Reaper got more speed. I remember when you didnt need to make a depo to make a barracks... god THOSE rushes were terrible. Now we have reapers running faster than speedlings on creep.
Also terran, they no longer need to upgrade air... Ugh. Can Zerg get that? Would really ease up roach/muta.
New thor thing... doesnt really do good damage. Not really worth it, but o one used the cannons anyways.

Onto toss!
Dark Shrine cost is lowered by a dark templar's gas, how wonderful. *Dt rush 40 seconds earlier*
Voids lost the definitive charging. Lame. Slightly faster, no extra massive damage and ANOTHER researchable buff. What is with tech upgrades and this patch?
Tempest made faster. Meh. Screw the tempest in its face.

Zerg got nerfed alot and didn't get any new toys. Yay! HOW WONDERFUL. All we got was extra health on our idiotically vulnerable new casters. (And the wonderful "Ultras can actually o damage on large packs of small tier". Charge was helpful, there.)

[BobVosh]

I'm just glad an ultra might finally be able to beat a zealot.

Yeah as a zerg player I'm fairly disappointed with HotS. Despite being named for zerg, all the new zerg things are dull.

[Acanous]

Blizzard does seem to do most of the op things to Terran, before going back and re-balancing. Zerg seems to take more nerfs and non-intuitive changes than anyone else, making them harder to play. Toss took a few nerfs to begin with, but then just sorta...stayed the same, which is probably why the world finals were Toss V Toss.

In other news: Raven change. Why >.< Were Banshee rushes not enough? Now we have early Raven for mineral harass while freeing up minerals and some gas. So a Terran can go 2 rax->Factory(+Tech Lab)-Starport swap, and have all the benefit of Banshee harass with none of the downside! (Notably lack of tank def, less marine macro)

Eh. I've ended up playing Terran more often than not. The new change has me 14th in Diamond league right now.

I could never have gotten there without it, and I expect to be kicked back to Gold as soon as people learn to counter it.

[Thiyr]

Blizzard does seem to do most of the op things to Terran, before going back and re-balancing. Zerg seems to take more nerfs and non-intuitive changes than anyone else, making them harder to play. Toss took a few nerfs to begin with, but then just sorta...stayed the same, which is probably why the world finals were Toss V Toss.

I...don't know how to respond to this. It sounds very off before actually looking at the patch notes, which...actually makes me just want to look at said patch notes and see how changes went overall.

-looks at patch notes-

Summary of the patches for those too lazy to look.

Spoiler

Show

Early patches seemed to be nerfs all around (Who remembers tanks just doing flat damage to everything and reapers not needing factory for speed?) That is to say, nerfs for everyone but zerg, who got ultras doing splash damage to buildings, stopping blink with fungal, and roach range.

From there, toss got some mixed-bag stuff, getting boosts to stuff nobody used at the time (phoenix buildtime reduced, hallucinate research time reduced) and losing void speed entirely in exchange for some damage boosting. The archon toilet was cut down in its prime, amulet was lost, and zealot charge was made far less useless. terran got more nerfin' (with the silver lining of faster cattlebruisers). Fungal got its damage boost in trade for a lower snare time (8 seconds before that. So crazy.)

Then archons became slightly more useful, getting some range and some MASSIVE, MASSIVE massiveness. Oh, and warpgate takes longer (but sentrys take less time when not warped!). Ghosts got price-shuffled a tad, bunkers stopped being completely free, and thors could be fed back again. Infestors got a movespeed nerf, and spores needed less time to re-root themselves.

Then came the great 4-gate buster. units can't see as far up ramps, immortals get range, blink takes longer to get, warp prisms aren't made of wet paper anymore, and mommaships stop lagging everything. Raxes are slower to build, seeker missiles chase faster, and hellions don't kill mineral lines quite as quick anymore. infestors stop being able to functionally solo protoss armies with neural (relegating it again to the bin of unusability), and stop having a strange percentage boost to damage on a spell that could've just had flat numbers. Ultras take less time, and overseers take less gas (but more energy to use that ability people forget it has)

Small update, toss rejoices that they don't have to sacrifice their firstborn for upgrades, terran is sad that their emp has mysteriously shrunk.

Then terran gets nerfed again, snipe becoming kinda useless, mules no longer mining out golds in one fell swoop. phoenixes get range upgrade to help toss deal with the mass muta ball of doom, obs come out faster, and queens become aMAYzinggggg. And that brings us to today, with seeker coming for free and infestors being toned back again.

In all the changes don't seem that crazy in retrospect. All the changes make sense for the most part, and no one race seems to get nerfed more than any other...well, aside from terran. Terran didn't get much of anything out of all these patches until the seeker change at the end.

In all, zerg seems to have gained some of the more notable changes, largely in relation to the infestor and ultra. Ultras are...still kinda bad as far as i can tell, but they gave it a shot. Infestors were made so good as to require reining back in, and are still I would argue one of if not the best casters in the game.

Toss gained and lost a fair chunk of stuff. The biggest "loss" is that they can no longer just 4gate every PvP ever, and they are the only race thusfar to have outright lost upgrades entirely (in that amulet and flux vanes no longer exist outright, rather than becoming standard features).

Still, overall I think they're all pretty sensible. Terran gets the shaft, which i don't necessarily see the reasoning for outside of them having the highest versatility overall. Otherwise the big changes seemed to be in response to the subject of the change being too much the unanswerable answer (infestors/4gate/uh...snipe giving terran a reason to get ghosts against zerg? Yea, I got nothin') In other words, I pretty much just disagree with you, looking back on it. Zerg's had it pretty nice all things considered, with the focus on them largely being "Infestors are still too good all the time, let's tone it back a tad and see if it's enough".

[Acanous]

Medivacs also had a speed boost. Don't forget the Medivac speed boost :p
I remember Thors getting boosted, nerfed, and rebalanced.

Toss though, yeah. They lost stuff, got other stuff. As a toss player at the time, it felt like Blizzard was saying "Don't play like that, play like THIS, you're having wrongbadfun!"

I remember when I would research the amulet, then psistorm, and counter a terran advance up my ramp with a Sentry and a hastilly warped in HT. Pinch them in, storm. If they tried a drop, warp in HT, Feedback the dropships right there. Toss could turtle better than terran, VS terran. Not so great VS other toss though.
When the amulet got taken away, I literally could not beat terran anymore. I lost so hard VS Terran that I de-leagued down to Silver, and had to change races to work my way back up.

Oddly enough, I managed Diamond, 15th at the moment in my league (War Pigs Rho) and have started playing Toss again.
Proxy 2gate Zealot Rush is my flavour of the month, and it's sooo gooood. Mostly because nobody expects a push in the first 3 minutes from Toss.

[Thiyr]

Medivacs also had a speed boost. Don't forget the Medivac speed boost :p
I remember Thors getting boosted, nerfed, and rebalanced.

I totally forgot about that...Though apparently it was a speed nerf (in 1.1.2). And thors only got the whole losing energy and getting a cooldown, then losing cooldown and getting energy. Yaaaaay liquipedia patchnotes :D

And yea, I still kinda miss amulet. The big problems, afaik, was precisely because it allowed for such (relatively) easy defenses at a moment's notice, and that it could be used to just storm an army the moment it moved out so long as you had pylons peppering the map. Granted, I kinda thought that was the _point_ of amulet, but still.

Still, I still say the colossus needs more tweaking than it's gotten, largely with it being the "get a bunch of these and win everything in every matchup unless they overcommit to the hardcounter" unit for toss.

As a side note, I've been taking the time to play a bit more terran in my normal 2v2s. Getting a fairly decent team timing down. Push when my ally has 2ish tanks and seige, by which point i normally have some combination of +1, stim, conc shells, and shield (i think i can pull off the first three by the time we hit normally). Solid enough that if we get outrushed we can hold it off, painful enough that we tend to be able to if not break their defenses, at least pin them in hard enough to ramp up production/tech/expo and push the advantage. Is quite entertaining.

[BobVosh]

I believe the nerf for the amulet was due to being too strong against drop play and harassment. That may just be me being crazy, but I could have sworn it was a stated reason.

The newest HotS patch is interesting, a faster regen for mutas (from .27 whatever to 1, so 4x faster). It looks like they want mutas for harass, but not a core army unit like it was earlier WoL.

[Karoht]

I believe the nerf for the amulet was due to being too strong against drop play and harassment. That may just be me being crazy, but I could have sworn it was a stated reason.

The newest HotS patch is interesting, a faster regen for mutas (from .27 whatever to 1, so 4x faster). It looks like they want mutas for harass, but not a core army unit like it was earlier WoL.

You are correct.
It basically made any competent Protoss player entirely immune to drops, while simultaneously making Psi-Storm a go-to assault strategy. And it made Pylons and Warp Prisms the uber dominant map control stategy as a result. The time between creation of High Templar and a Storm going off was typically under 5 seconds.
The sideline reason why the Amulet was nerfed was due to Warp In + Feedback being the dominant strategy for defending against MMM. Feedback the Medivacs and Storm the bio ball, it literally became an on-demand soft counter (bordering on hard counter) that required next to no build up and very little anticipation/investment (just research) to pull off. Used correctly it could dominate early game and was a solid mid-game strategy. And if things started to get out of hand, pull them back behind a light amount of base defenses and turn them into Archons... while warping in more High Templar to

I think a more elegant solution would have been to have a cooldown attached to those abilities upon unit creation. 15 seconds, maybe as little as 10. The amulet would have still been remarkably useful, Storms/Feedback would have seen a bit more play, and it would have reduced the on-demand aspect (which was the stated problem) of the High Templar as a base defense strategy.

[Acanous]

Thing is, Infestors still have their +Energy, and when I'm Zerg, I still use them to hard-counter drops (With HT, it was a soft-counter, if they didn't have full energy I couldn't kill them. If they dropped IN my mineral line, I had to move the probes out before storm, meaning they had time to t+move.)
Infestor Fungals, though, stop the drop as WELL as damaging the Medivacs. ALL of them. You could send 4, 8, or 12, I can fungal 'em all.

The only real difference is the Warp-in time for HT VS the morphin' time for Infestors.

Admittedly, there's a big difference in time there, but they could have just increased the warp-in by 5 seconds.

Also, in spitting distance of master league again. 2 gate Proxy Zealot Rush is amazing.

Easy for a Terran to counter, but Zerg are taking losses, and enemy Protoss on standard build are just going to die.

[BobVosh]

1 minute for an infestor vs even 10 seconds for a high templar is pretty big. Also an infestor takes 50 seconds, the upgrade gives +25 energy which is the amount an infestor would gain in 50 seconds. It basically gives energy while in the egg.
So basically 50 seconds vs ~52 seconds. Also feedback + storms can kill a drop pretty quick. Although that will be hard after boosters.

[BobVosh]

Reminder: Session starts in 12 hours from this post.

[LaughingGnoll]

Is anyone watching the Iron Squid Tournament?

I'll admit I'm a little behind, because I've been watching from Day9's site when he puts them up, and then usually a few days later anyways, but ...

HOLY COW SCARLETT BEAT THE LIVING BEJEESUS OUT OF MARINEKINGPRIME

O.O

[Karoht]

Is anyone watching the Iron Squid Tournament?

I'll admit I'm a little behind, because I've been watching from Day9's site when he puts them up, and then usually a few days later anyways, but ...

HOLY COW SCARLETT BEAT THE LIVING BEJEESUS OUT OF MARINEKINGPRIME

O.O

Heck yeah!
And that's no small feat either, MKP has a lot of clever tricks up his sleeve, don't let the name fool you into thinking he only ever uses Marines either.

[Acanous]

Speaking of things, I was just in a 3v3 against a guy called Apollo, apparently he does videos for Blizzard? Anyhow, won it, although my banshees were really only good for taking out Red and forcing the other two to spend on detection/AA. They came right for me after that, so I spent most of the last 7 minutes recovering and using a pair of Ravens to screw over the enemy stalkers while my teammates' bio ball went to town up and down the map.

I also launched a missile at a muta ball, but dude moved the one being tracked, which is the first time I've seen anyone micro a single muta out of the ball like that. (They were clustered pretty tight, *I* couldn't tell which one was being tracked.).

[Karoht]

That is some pretty sick micro.
Most people willl just scatter all the mutas, or move them all back, then scatter them, then micro the one, then move back in.
This person drew off ONE muta out of the pack without moving the others? Dang.

[Silverraptor]

Can you post that replay at all? Apollo has casted alongside Day9 before.:

[Acanous]

Can you post that replay at all? Apollo has casted alongside Day9 before.:

Why certainly, my good Raptor.

[Spuddles]

I...don't know how to respond to this. It sounds very off before actually looking at the patch notes, which...actually makes me just want to look at said patch notes and see how changes went overall.

-looks at patch notes-

Summary of the patches for those too lazy to look.

Spoiler

Show

Early patches seemed to be nerfs all around (Who remembers tanks just doing flat damage to everything and reapers not needing factory for speed?) That is to say, nerfs for everyone but zerg, who got ultras doing splash damage to buildings, stopping blink with fungal, and roach range.

From there, toss got some mixed-bag stuff, getting boosts to stuff nobody used at the time (phoenix buildtime reduced, hallucinate research time reduced) and losing void speed entirely in exchange for some damage boosting. The archon toilet was cut down in its prime, amulet was lost, and zealot charge was made far less useless. terran got more nerfin' (with the silver lining of faster cattlebruisers). Fungal got its damage boost in trade for a lower snare time (8 seconds before that. So crazy.)

Then archons became slightly more useful, getting some range and some MASSIVE, MASSIVE massiveness. Oh, and warpgate takes longer (but sentrys take less time when not warped!). Ghosts got price-shuffled a tad, bunkers stopped being completely free, and thors could be fed back again. Infestors got a movespeed nerf, and spores needed less time to re-root themselves.

Then came the great 4-gate buster. units can't see as far up ramps, immortals get range, blink takes longer to get, warp prisms aren't made of wet paper anymore, and mommaships stop lagging everything. Raxes are slower to build, seeker missiles chase faster, and hellions don't kill mineral lines quite as quick anymore. infestors stop being able to functionally solo protoss armies with neural (relegating it again to the bin of unusability), and stop having a strange percentage boost to damage on a spell that could've just had flat numbers. Ultras take less time, and overseers take less gas (but more energy to use that ability people forget it has)

Small update, toss rejoices that they don't have to sacrifice their firstborn for upgrades, terran is sad that their emp has mysteriously shrunk.

Then terran gets nerfed again, snipe becoming kinda useless, mules no longer mining out golds in one fell swoop. phoenixes get range upgrade to help toss deal with the mass muta ball of doom, obs come out faster, and queens become aMAYzinggggg. And that brings us to today, with seeker coming for free and infestors being toned back again.

In all the changes don't seem that crazy in retrospect. All the changes make sense for the most part, and no one race seems to get nerfed more than any other...well, aside from terran. Terran didn't get much of anything out of all these patches until the seeker change at the end.

In all, zerg seems to have gained some of the more notable changes, largely in relation to the infestor and ultra. Ultras are...still kinda bad as far as i can tell, but they gave it a shot. Infestors were made so good as to require reining back in, and are still I would argue one of if not the best casters in the game.

Toss gained and lost a fair chunk of stuff. The biggest "loss" is that they can no longer just 4gate every PvP ever, and they are the only race thusfar to have outright lost upgrades entirely (in that amulet and flux vanes no longer exist outright, rather than becoming standard features).

Still, overall I think they're all pretty sensible. Terran gets the shaft, which i don't necessarily see the reasoning for outside of them having the highest versatility overall. Otherwise the big changes seemed to be in response to the subject of the change being too much the unanswerable answer (infestors/4gate/uh...snipe giving terran a reason to get ghosts against zerg? Yea, I got nothin') In other words, I pretty much just disagree with you, looking back on it. Zerg's had it pretty nice all things considered, with the focus on them largely being "Infestors are still too good all the time, let's tone it back a tad and see if it's enough".

But that was all post-beta. Terran were hugely front loaded in WoL beta, and all the subsequent patches were basically after a year of Terrans destroying everyone at Code S level and above. Teamliquid has the stats; they've been posted in these threads before.

The no upgrades on infested terrans really, really hurts. That's just an overwhelming nerf.

Terran buffs are pretty silly. I don't get why they needed that stuff. Haven't watched too much HotS play, but it looks like zerg have a lot of trouble adapting to the new ZvT changes.

Between fast medivacs, spider mines, reapers, and two sorts of hellion, terran basically have a million ways to harass mineral lines all game. Having 1 upgrade for all mech units makes tank/viking amazing while the infestor nerfs makes responding to that sort of stuff much harder.

I'm interested to see what happens with the metagame, though. I expect many, many zerg tears, until the new infestor is discovered. Don't know what that is going to be, though.

Oh, and the new map pool makes blord infestor much harder to play, due to slowness of army. One thing I'd like to see is the collapsible rocks used offensively. You can knock those down so they block expansions, right?

Protoss again feels like it got the short end of the stick. They're still reliant on deathballing and got a handful more harassment options.

[BobVosh]

Having 1 upgrade for all mech units makes tank/viking...

It got split up a bit, the armor upgrade is the same, separate upgrades for attack.

I'm interested to see what happens with the metagame, though. I expect many, many zerg tears, until the new infestor is discovered. Don't know what that is going to be, though.

I'm surprised at how few people use swarm hosts now. It sucks they lost the ability to shoot up.

One thing I'd like to see is the collapsible rocks used offensively.

When they fall on the building it does damage to it. Same amount it takes to break them though, so I guess you can predamage it. Honestly they seem like a silly gimmick, and I dislike that the base isn't breakable making these large walls near most expansions.

Protoss again feels like it got the short end of the stick. They're still reliant on deathballing and got a handful more harassment options.

Surprisingly they play a bit like zerg did, with building tempest then protecting them. Early game has changed a lot with the addition of the MS core as well.