EPTThe IPL this season has been really well produced, and I'm enjoying the commentating by catsPJs and Painuser more and more. They had some unfortunate technical hick-ups on the first 2 days, but nothing big. If JTV could sort their stream out, then it would be ideal.
On Day9 last week he talked about MC's stargate build vs zerg, and it looked really scary. He talked about how it covered this and that response, and how it wasn't cheesey at all. As a zerg player I was really thinking abut how it would be possible to play against this, knowing that many P players would be watching this and doing it themselves. Then I saw Destiny playing on the Korean server against about 10 protoss in a row all going stargate, and he had this build which was fast infestors and a lot of speed lings (as usual) with burrow, and he abused their lack of detection by spamming infested terrans and rushing lings at their natural expo. Literally nobody could hold it, and I personally think it is a hard counter to stargate only P builds. Without detection or 4 - 6 gates worth of gateway units its not possible to hold it. Unfortunately Destiny became over confident in this build and has been using it as a kind of blind cheese to any P build, and got knocked out of TL open because of it. Come on man, you got to still play reactively!
Watching Destiny play some practice games vs Slayers Dragon really made me realise what is so different about these Korean pro players. I think every good player gets to a stage where they can scout their opponents base, and then react accordingly so that their build "counters" the opponents build, and obviously they get used to holding off standard aggression like 6 gate or 2 rax etc, so that these builds become less effective. However, whilst a standard 2 rax might only have a few marines and a couple of scvs, the Korean pro version brings tons of scvs and insane aggression. Any attack is always a lot stronger than is standard, so much so you might even call most of it "all-in-ish". What also makes these attacks even tougher to defend is that they are expert at hiding their tech, so that it's very difficult to see what is coming. Honestly, SC2 has never felt like rolling a dice to me in my own play, but when I see Korean players play it really seems that it is because of this combination of hiding tech and all-in attacks.
In my own play, I've been playing some games getting ready for Season 3 for a real crack at ladder climbing. I've been trying to improve my infestor micro, getting used to all the spells hotkeys so that I can hit them in a reactive split second, and also trying to control their positioning so that they don't die. Until now I have not been using micro intensive units, and that has been really good for me learning to macro better, and it is really a viable play style for Zerg i think, but I see that infestors are a powerful unit, and I want to make use of them in my play.
I have also literally just started recording a starcraft cover, a'la "Banelings" or "When I'm Grandmaster", which should be pretty cool. I just started putting the drums and bass down, and I'll have to go to my Dad's studio for recording guitars and Vox. Anyway, I wondered if anyone else had ideas for covers of songs that could be done with Starcraft lyrics? "Storm me baby one more time"?, "All along the xelnaga watchtower"?...
. Even when we watch the worst players on GSL that cop so much flak in the LR, they play so well, makes me shiver
