[Megathread] StarCraft 2

[Wass]

Nothing proper creep spread and micro wouldn't solve, you should've learned to micro against zealots, treat hellbats as zealots with aoe attack. They do kill mineral lines way too fast, i could see Blizzard removing bonus damage vs light baseline and restoring it with blue flame, it would make hellbat harass strong only with proper investment, also it would be scoutable because siege tech is removed, so seeing factory lab researching something would mean you have time to spread overlords to see medivacs and make some roaches to deter drops.

The hellbat tech change sounds like a really good idea for balance purposes. Nerf + light damage a bit so they don't 2-shot drones and let em do it once blueflame has been researched.

How would you say is the best way to beat mech as Zerg? Like what gives you the most trouble if you ever go mech? As of right now I just usually make a lot of mutas or roach/hydra and run away to base race xD

Overlord placement on the map to scout drops and denying them is key. Swarm hosts can keep you floating for a while until you can tech to ultra and/or viper. Those two units are really good to decimate mech. Meaning you need to get to Hive. Pretty fast, too. Don't stay on lairtech vs mech, it just doesn't work after 15+ mins when the ball starts becoming large.

[-Zait-]

The hellbat tech change sounds like a really good idea for balance purposes. Nerf + light damage a bit so they don't 2-shot drones and let em do it once blueflame has been researched.



Overlord placement on the map to scout drops and denying them is key. Swarm hosts can keep you floating for a while until you can tech to ultra and/or viper. Those two units are really good to decimate mech. Meaning you need to get to Hive. Pretty fast, too. Don't stay on lairtech vs mech, it just doesn't work after 15+ mins when the ball starts becoming large.

Yeah my overlords are usually good and I see the drops coming, the issue being that I under react because I'm so used to just regular hellion damage. (x

And ok I'll that out, thanks.

[Wass]

Yeah my overlords are usually good and I see the drops coming, the issue being that I under react because I'm so used to just regular hellion damage. (x

And ok I'll that out, thanks.

Feel free to add Sepppeliscute.537 ingame if you want to play a bit for fun.

[Millennía]

Can anyone who pre-purchased HoTS play beta? Pre-ordered it about 2 weeks ago and just been playing WoL since then but really want to try HoTS D:

[Nerraw]

They're letting pre-orders in through waves each week. If you're not in yet you'll be in soon.

[Wass]

Millennia I think I have to disappoint you but with the beta ending around first of march blizzard kinda stopped the handouts. You probably need to get it from somewhere else.

[Blackdecker]

Got promoted to gold league after 350* games, 120 as zerg which is what i played all the silver.
People in gold league are so more agressive and "cheesy" than in silver, i've played like 10 games and it always end before a third. I'm constatly using 9pool in this league, just to have 6 lings ready to defend.

*First time playing a RTS.

[Millennía]

Got promoted to gold league after 350* games, 120 as zerg which is what i played all the silver.
People in gold league are so more agressive and "cheesy" than in silver, i've played like 10 games and it always end before a third. I'm constatly using 9pool in this league, just to have 6 lings ready to defend.

*First time playing a RTS.

Thanks for the heads up, I guess. Im currently rank 6 Silver as Zerg with 19 wins and hoping to progress to Gold before HoTS - just as a personal target thing. I did read about Gold league a bit and seen comments saying it was more expansion based play but if it is better than Silver for cheese then it must be bad. I have been 6 pooled and cannon rushed quite a lot lately.

[-Zait-]

Thanks for the heads up, I guess. Im currently rank 6 Silver as Zerg with 19 wins and hoping to progress to Gold before HoTS - just as a personal target thing. I did read about Gold league a bit and seen comments saying it was more expansion based play but if it is better than Silver for cheese then it must be bad. I have been 6 pooled and cannon rushed quite a lot lately.

If you're silver and you want to get better just worry about perfecting macro. Don't try and do fancy builds, don't get a bunch of bases, just worry about consistently making units, then learning how creep spread, putting overlords in the right spots, learning how to micro well, etc. will come with learning macroing well. If you macro better than your opponent, you'll win 9 times out of ten, simply because you're going to have more stuff than him.

Also something you can try and do if you're tired of getting cheesed, is just 6pool, make 6 lings, then immediately go back to drone production and get your expansion up. Send the 6 lings to their base and you can usually do some good damage.

Honestly, if you learned how to macro really well, you could even just make mass queens and win. A guy named Destiny made a bunch of videos a while back showing this, to prove that macro is what people in lower leagues need to work on the most, and he illustrates the point a lot better than me. They're pretty entertaining also if you want to check them out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1UN98vOKuk

[Wass]

Zait is ofcourse right.

Scouting and macro is what makes the difference from silver -> platinum. Really. Being able to read what your opponent is doing based on what you are scouting is too valuable to ignore. Also Zerg is probably the hardest race to learn, but once you got the basics down you progress up the ladder -really- fast. Think of injects as breathing. If you don't inject, you don't breathe. If you don't breathe, you die.

TLDR; Zerg is hard in lower leagues and becomes easier compared to other races the higher league you get in.

[Millennía]

@ Zait and Wass

Thanks for the tips. I have tried the other races but the Zerg is where I play with the most comfort. My injects are near perfect now because that is the first things I worked on. To help with that, I use the locations so at the start of the game I ctrl + F1-F4 my main and 3 expansion areas so I can just jump to them every time i hear the inject larvae sound when its over.

As for macro, i find it easier with good injects - I constantly just press 4 to select all my hatcheries then S and create the units as I am fighting. I don't always get it right but most of the time I do. I do have to agree about the builds though, I tried a few builds I seen online but they are a bit harder to stick to at lower leagues because your opponent can go for anything like 1 base Battlecruiser, which I actually met earlier today lol but I had him completely contained with Infestors and scouted his BC's before he could get more than 3 so mass corruptor sorted that out easily.

I don't have a build per say, but I do pay attention to timings and I do stick to my same opening in all games and it does work for me a lot of the time. Expand @ 15 against Terran or @14 against Protoss. Gas to get ling speed + double evo chamber, lair and 2 more gases between 7:00 and 7:30 then go mass Infestor/Zergling/Baneling and just add on a spire if I need to fight off air units or want Broodlords.

Thanks for the video link. I will check it out now as I am familiar with Destiny and Day9 but of course I have to take what they say in terms of strategy with a pinch of salt because low levels can be far from predictable. I do think I will get promoted soon though which is great because I am playing more and more gold level players and have about a 50% win rate against them and are even now marked as "Favoured/Slightly Favoured" against other Silver players!

PS: 15+ Infestors is REALLY effective in low league play

[Wass]

Lower leagues are weird yes but as long as you just stick to standard safe play this weirdness can't beat you.

[-Zait-]

@ Zait and Wass

Thanks for the tips. I have tried the other races but the Zerg is where I play with the most comfort. My injects are near perfect now because that is the first things I worked on. To help with that, I use the locations so at the start of the game I ctrl + F1-F4 my main and 3 expansion areas so I can just jump to them every time i hear the inject larvae sound when its over.

As for macro, i find it easier with good injects - I constantly just press 4 to select all my hatcheries then S and create the units as I am fighting. I don't always get it right but most of the time I do. I do have to agree about the builds though, I tried a few builds I seen online but they are a bit harder to stick to at lower leagues because your opponent can go for anything like 1 base Battlecruiser, which I actually met earlier today lol but I had him completely contained with Infestors and scouted his BC's before he could get more than 3 so mass corruptor sorted that out easily.

I don't have a build per say, but I do pay attention to timings and I do stick to my same opening in all games and it does work for me a lot of the time. Expand @ 15 against Terran or @14 against Protoss. Gas to get ling speed + double evo chamber, lair and 2 more gases between 7:00 and 7:30 then go mass Infestor/Zergling/Baneling and just add on a spire if I need to fight off air units or want Broodlords.

Thanks for the video link. I will check it out now as I am familiar with Destiny and Day9 but of course I have to take what they say in terms of strategy with a pinch of salt because low levels can be far from predictable. I do think I will get promoted soon though which is great because I am playing more and more gold level players and have about a 50% win rate against them and are even now marked as "Favoured/Slightly Favoured" against other Silver players!

PS: 15+ Infestors is REALLY effective in low league play

Infestors are so OP in Wings, enjoy it while it lasts xD And yeah just worry about macro. If you're on like three or four bases and can't control your money, just go back to two or three bases. Trying to macro off of a bunch of bases is like trying to run before you can walk, it's impossible. And like Wass said, Zerg is the hardest race to master just because of all the different mechanics with them, like creep spread, injects, etc. but when you master it you'll dominate people.

[Wass]

It's not exactly what I said Zait, Zerg is difficult at first but then gets really easy once you have the macro mechanics down. I play Terran now and I tell you it's a pain in the ass past gold league. The amount of multitasking I have to do is incredible.

[Blackdecker]

How do i know if the Protoss is going to all-in in 8 minutes?

What i was doing till now is to take a third earlier, drone up to 70 (like 8 minutes) and then make roaches/zergling till they come, which is around 12~13. It works fine when they attack at 12~14 minutes, However some protoss do the same openning and attack at 8 minutes and i just die.

Thanks.

[Wass]

Decker, rhree scenarios that cover most playstyles:

A) Scout protoss natural at 5min. No signs of him expanding? Check his main, he's probably cheesing. Drone up till no more than 40-50 drones and mass roaches + spines, hold his attack and gg. If you happen to see double gas, tech lair as he might go dt. Or get spore crawlers, but lair is generally better.

B) He has expanded, but with gateways and has no real wall at his natural. Harass with zerglings (get zspeed right away) and expand behind, you will control the game.

C) He does a FFE. The most dangerous thing if it's in the hands of a good player. You need to grab your third right away as soon as you see the forge at his natural. Macro well and get to 70 drones, place overlords and lings in key positions and start pumping roaches as soon as you see him move out of his base. Hold the push and control the game from there.

Sorry for ev. typos, I'm on a phone.

[Blackdecker]

Decker, rhree scenarios that cover most playstyles:

Thanks for the tips.

http://i.imgur.com/kbXzBRg.jpg
Played some games today, these win/lose streak are so annoying.

[Millennía]

Well I have been playing a few games now and I have been focusing solely on my macro. There has been a few times where it has slipped due to early pushes though but it is getting better. However, when my pure macro goes good then I feel like I cant lose because after every engagement I have a fresh army ready to go again

Still in Silver League atm but I just destroyed a Gold league "slightly favoured" Terran player with an Infestor/Zergling/Ultralisk combo with a few muta's to deal with drops and reached Rank 1 in Silver so improvements are definitely happening! Which is evident by my match history: http://i.imgur.com/izkfHDs.jpg

One thing I am still unsure of as Zerg though, in particular against Protoss but also in general which is when is it safe to take and 3rd and 4th etc? I lost a game earlier to a Protoss player and I feel that I got too greedy and took a 3rd so my army just couldn't handle his Colossus/Stalker/Charge Zealot force. Against a passive Terran player I try to take a 3rd around 7 mins or so but against this Protoss I took a 3rd at 8 mins so I am not sure if i was just being greedy but it could also be a combination of that and that I didn't scout as much as I perhaps should of.

[Blackdecker]

One thing I am still unsure of as Zerg though, in particular against Protoss but also in general which is when is it safe to take and 3rd and 4th etc? I lost a game earlier to a Protoss player and I feel that I got too greedy and took a 3rd so my army just couldn't handle his Colossus/Stalker/Charge Zealot force. Against a passive Terran player I try to take a 3rd around 7 mins or so but against this Protoss I took a 3rd at 8 mins so I am not sure if i was just being greedy but it could also be a combination of that and that I didn't scout as much as I perhaps should of.

Give a look at this ZvP build, helped me a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cBpiip3hTw

[Shinzai]

Well I have been playing a few games now and I have been focusing solely on my macro. There has been a few times where it has slipped due to early pushes though but it is getting better. However, when my pure macro goes good then I feel like I cant lose because after every engagement I have a fresh army ready to go again

Still in Silver League atm but I just destroyed a Gold league "slightly favoured" Terran player with an Infestor/Zergling/Ultralisk combo with a few muta's to deal with drops and reached Rank 1 in Silver so improvements are definitely happening! Which is evident by my match history: http://i.imgur.com/izkfHDs.jpg

One thing I am still unsure of as Zerg though, in particular against Protoss but also in general which is when is it safe to take and 3rd and 4th etc? I lost a game earlier to a Protoss player and I feel that I got too greedy and took a 3rd so my army just couldn't handle his Colossus/Stalker/Charge Zealot force. Against a passive Terran player I try to take a 3rd around 7 mins or so but against this Protoss I took a 3rd at 8 mins so I am not sure if i was just being greedy but it could also be a combination of that and that I didn't scout as much as I perhaps should of.

Around 6 minutes is normally on time for a Zerg, the general saying is to always have 1 more base than your enemy as Zerg. However, if you feel/know an early rush is coming, feel free to delay it for 1-4 minutes as needed. If they rush you and do not win, you will have gained however much time was wasted by them as an advantage. Say they throw a medium size army at you at 6~7 minutes and fail, that'll set them back at least 2 minutes worth of supply if you've been continuing to macro in the background. After 2 minutes of recovery time, you'll almost always be able to send a full army back to them and wipe them out.

If cheese plays don't pay off instantly, they almost never will, unless it's in the upper tiers of Diamond+, where they may be able to micro down some opponents.