StarCraft2 Beta Announced

[ECA]

101:

Try and keep your mineral/gas as close to 0 as possible.
Have some sort of unit type development plan from the get-go - adjust if necessary.

SCOUT
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THINGS BEAUTIFUL SCOUT

play a lot.

 

[Lethul]

If anyone else got a buddy key they wanna share i'm all for having one! Sharing a key with a friend and he started playing a lot now so not much time for me

 

[mooSe_]

I didn't get a buddy key last time they gave a wave of them out

The only problem with scouting at low levels is that you don't know what you are looking for. When I first started and I was in copper league I didn't scout except to find my opponents base on 4player maps because if I got into his base I wouldn't know what I was looking at. Nowadays though I always scout on 10 unless its a close starting point map like scrap station, then I use overlord scout (except vs terran so my overlord doesn't get shot down by a marine).

 

[LordjOX]

Yeah, not sure what I'm looking for at the start either. 2 early refineries doesn't always mean high tech stuff at the start, also when I see early 2x barracks or gatehouse. What does it mean? Maybe time to rush or go for some defensive stuff

Besides, I don't want to just sit and hoard units while I have no clue what's coming for me

Atleast I don't lose every fight now

Zerg wasn't my kind of cake, but I like protoss and terran

 

[ECA]

The first thing you're looking for is if they have "normal" stuff in their base - ie to make sure you're not getting proxy pylon'd, cannon rushed, reaper rushed, etc etc.

Then you're looking for clues as to what their plan might be - ie double gas fast for protoss is often a sign they are going to tech up and rush for colossus, and for terran it can mean factory and perhaps into starport.

They have to make something to kill your unit ( terrans have ranged units - if protoss makes a zealot it can't kill your scout if micro'd correctly ).

They typically should have something after that first building up before your scout can get killed also.

Then you get blocked out - untill you get observer/scan/overlord(or overseer ) in for another look.

You can send your units to pressure their wall and see what they attack you back with, and so on.

 

[mooSe_]

Well here is what I can think of atm that I look for:

vs protoss:
no gates - they are either a complete noob or they have some hidden gates somewhere for proxy rush
early forge - some kind of gay photon cannon spam/noob
2 gateways early - probably a zealot rush
1 gateway 1 cybernetics core (standard) - could be a lot of things; they might be teching to immortal/collosus/voidray/or just going for sentry+zealot push so stick around with your scout as long as you can to get more info. Look for robo bay/stargate.

vs terran:
no barracks - same as no gateway, they probably have one hidden somewhere near your base so they can rush you with reapers
early barracks + few scvs mining - probably early reaper harrass again
2+ barracks - probably going marine/marauder and maybe medivac later on
I'm not very good at scouting terran tbh, but its hard when their first unit is ranged and they always wall in. Different timings on factory and different building addons could mean hellion harrass/fast thor/seige tank or fast banshee

vs zerg:
early pool (it's already done or nearly done when you get there scouting with early worker) + few drones - ling rush
other than that you can tell which units a zerg is likely to make by what buildings he has; he pretty much needs to make a different building for each new unit. So if you scan and see roach den + hydra den then expect roach hydra
It's hard to scout zerg with ground units once his pool is up though because his units will move faster than yours on creep and easily run you down.

 

[kirennia]

If anyone else got a buddy key they wanna share i'm all for having one! Sharing a key with a friend and he started playing a lot now so not much time for me

Read inbox.

Anyone got any idea how this ranking system works because I'm starting to get more then a lil annoyed. I decided to try and practice a terran strategy which I didn't know during my placement matches. I was more then annoyed at the profile rollbacks (I must have had 15-20 of them) and the patch notes didnt specifically note their fix of this issue so I just assumed it was business as usual and didn't really care what happened.

They ended up fixing it and I dropped to the bronze league with a stupid strategy. Since then I've been playing many matches and as far as I remember, I haven't had a single match where I was favored. Lately I've been ranked against several silver and even gold players and won some, lost some. Most recently I've beaten around 4 gold players rank 12+. First, why on earth am I matched against them in the first place but most importantly, surely I should be at least moved up one league by now? I'm comfortably first in my division, have played many, many games with people in above leagues and won yet I still remain where I am...

If they're assessing whether I should be moved to gold or silver, it's sort of fair enough but I'd be a lot more comfortable simply moving up one division at a time, at least in a decent time period. Argh basically.

Despite all this, I'm still very much enjoying the game; I've even begun watching a fair few streams. Day9 dailys (Annoying grammar I know) are very insightful and provide a lot of mind management strategies to progress to a higher level. HDStarcraft and Husky have some pretty good commentary and alternate suggestions during matches which makes you quickly learn new ways of countering and Crota from starcraft legacy... well he hosted the first game I watched so I still pop into his channel from time to time.

I'm kind of surprised at the level of devotion some people have... 500+ games played in the last month? Competitions with thousands of dollars at stake? Crazy stuff this world of e-sports.

 

[ECA]

It doesn't matter what league you're in.

You have a hidden ELO rating that is what dictates who you play - if you're on a platinum level you'll shortly be playing only platinum players.

 

[mooSe_]

After the last reset I messed up most of my placement games and ended up in bronze (went 1-4) but now I'm up in platinum. It took like 80 games or so but I got there. If you keep playing above your level you will be moved up.

 

[kirennia]

The very next game I came up against a rank 18 zerg player who I beat which put me into the silver league. If anything I would have thought beating a gold and getting promoted there would have put me into gold but I'm happy nonetheless.

153 bonus pool from 1520 ish points... or I guess probably 1530ish points. I guess we now know how the ranking bonus pool works then.

 

[mooSe_]

here is some info on how the ladder system supposedly works, lots of it seems to be speculation though:
SC2 Ladder Analysis: What YOU Need to Know

 

[kirennia]

here is some info on how the ladder system supposedly works, lots of it seems to be speculation though:
SC2 Ladder Analysis: What YOU Need to Know

Nice read. I'd also like to add that while I am uncertain, I do wonder whether those 'review checkpoints' only occur after a set number of games played without closing the game... I played a serious number of gold/silver players and very rarely lost to any bronze but I did however, play a game or 2, then logoff and come back a little while later.

I may be completely off the mark but perhaps when it comes to me thinking I'm in for a promotion again, I'll log out after every game to see its effects (as according to that report, that wouldn't change who I'm up against anyway ). The best concilation (sp?) is that I quite literally, don't think I've played any games where I've been favoured, at LEAST within my last 40 games. I guess that's an indicator you're on the rise?

 

[mooSe_]

Yeah I always seem to be unfavoured in every game I play too recently: and this is when I was promoted from gold to platinum; I haven't really been paying attention to it since I've moved up though, maybe now I'm in the top league I'll finally get some favoured games.

I did notice before as well; when I was in gold league and decided to start playing terran, I went on a massive losing streak (had never played terran before and had to go vs gold league players) and then it started putting me as favoured vs everyone I played. This also supports that idea; because the system noticed I was doing shit and decided to put me vs weaker players to decide whether I needed to be moved down. I switched back to zerg and went on a winning streak though so I never got demoted

 

[Lethul]

Sounds like all of you guys are starting to become rather good
Don't think I wanna play 2on2 with you guys anymore

 

[LordjOX]

If anyone wants to play for luls or give advice to a noob, my id is Uncron.joakibj

 

[kirennia]

I'm still wanting to get to grips with Protoss and Terran at some point as I'm still pretty unsure about their builds. As Terran I just fail horribly, Protoss I'm better at but suffer during the mid-game and Zerg, well... they're just awesome.

The only thing I'm really suffering with as Zerg are the stalker/Collosi balls which decimate any ground army and are very strong against mutalisks. Unless you have an equal number of mutalisks to their stalkers, you're screwed. Okay corruptors are a fair alternative but once those collosi are down, they still have a strong blink army. I was a little annoyed to see fungal growth doesn't stop stalkers from blinking and as for mind control... pretty weak against collosi as they have the same range but infestors just cannot get a decent vantage point for it to work. I'm kind of stumped at the moment.

Shall add IDs again when I get a chance to play.

 

[mooSe_]

I also want to get the hang of terran/protoss a bit more. I'm worried that I won't learn anything if I just get bashed by platinum players every game though. If anyone wants to add me (mooSe.moose) then we can maybe play some unrated games using different races for practise?

 

[ECA]

Protoss is easy, just go 4 warpgate and drop an expo when you push.
If you want to exploit some maps go 1 gate> robo> 3 more gates and use observer+pylon to warp into their high ground ( works on stuff like lost temple where there are big areas people don't look at ), and then switch into HT+colossus+zealots if they don't die to your push ( people not at plat will just die all day long ).

Terran - no idea.

 

[Lethul]

lethul.lethul if anyone wanna add

A bit worrying, I've won my first 3 placement games so far. Placement games gives me worse opponents than custom games. I really don't want to be placed to high so hopefully I will lose the last 2

 

[Lethul]

Won the fourth as well, strangest tactic I have encountered so far. He rushed Thor and dropped a Thor in my mineral line But Immortal > Thor !

Oh, and this seems fairly unstoppable on this map.

YouTube- SC2 Cheese 1v1 Cannons

 

[Lethul]

I ended up in platinum after winning my 5 placement matches, I have a feeling I will get my ass whooped a lot until i end up in gold/silver

 

[mooSe_]

I've encountered thor drop strats quite a few times; I tend to struggle vs them as zerg.

I've lost to proxy cannon rush a few times too the only way to stop it really is to kill the probe, which is hard with your own probes, or spam lots of cannons yourself.

 

[LordjOX]

I've encountered thor drop strats quite a few times; I tend to struggle vs them as zerg.

I've lost to proxy cannon rush a few times too the only way to stop it really is to kill the probe, which is hard with your own probes, or spam lots of cannons yourself.

I had that happen to me, but the fella put the cannons close to my ramp so I managed to hold off for a while then made a nydus worm into his main base. gg from him shortly thereafter

But yeah, with the strategy in the above youtube link, I've no idea to defend vs that except to try pop the probe with own harvesters

 

[LordjOX]

Added some bnet ids, note that I'm a little coppermonkey still though

 

[mooSe_]

I'm not liking the new patch very much. Roach nerf was too much imo, and we haven't got the ultralisk buffs they promised yet.

 

[kirennia]

Completely agree. As a zerg player, this is just one big /sigh. I never really massed roaches, I just used them early on as zerglings just simply do not cut it which is where this nerf hits them the worst. I don't get the mid-late game issue the enemy would have with roaches. Protoss can seriously, seriously crush mass roaches with just a handful of sentries and a few collosi (Monetery cost would be comparable for each race). MMM balls with stim just destroy roach heavy compositions. Are they trying to make the ultralisk late game viable by crippling zerg early play? lol.

I'm going to be experimenting with 15pool, 15extractor, triple queen with zerglings into lair into hydras/infestors. Sod FE as zerg for a little while now unless you can apply a LOT of pressure with speedlings...but then you've pretty much won it no matter what you do anyway.

Perhaps if there is a big battle and I loose a lot of units I'll use Roaches to reinforce an army or create a fast defence against a counter push but that's about it. I'll stick with zerg though; if there's one thing DAoC taught me, it's to stick with what you know and roll with the punches.

 

[mooSe_]

Well at least people won't be able to stop my speedling/baneling openings in zvz now

 

[Lethul]

Who cares about Z anyway, my life for Aiur!

 

[ECA]

Went 5-0 in 2v2 on both US and EU betas and got into plat

Promptly got beaten down into silver on US beta but now on a winning record again.
Looking forward to getting raped into oblivion in EU beta with my even worse partner here.

 

[Jimmy]

just got my key today its downloading as we speak ..........oh need to change my pants i seem to have sticky patch