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Stripping for Jaedong + HotsContest

Blogs > LeafMeAlone
Post a Reply
LeafMeAlone
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
United States301 Posts
June 13 2012 03:24 GMT
#1
This blog is to tell the story of my MLG Anaheim experience and my thoughts on HotS. It would be simpler just to write a review of HotS but that's too boring. ^^

+ Show Spoiler +
This is my very first blog so I apologize if it's bad


Anyway, I could only go to MLG on Sunday since I don't have total control over my schedule yet (I'm 16) but one day was good enough. Better than enough actually !

I woke up at 7:00 AM and went to the school parking lot to get picked up my friend's mom plus two of my friends. We did the usual greetings and made sure we brought everything (i.e. money, stuff to sign) then went on our way.

The convention center isn't terribly far from us so we got there pretty early. But the place looked empty from the outside. And the doors were locked. Uh oh. So we walked around a lot of the building looking for a way in when we see a sign that says MLG Anaheim building D (I forgot what it actually says but it doesn't matter). Realizing that we're at the wrong part of the center, we took a decently sized walk to the correct place.

I've never been to an MLG before so upon entering the inside, everything was overwhelming. To the left were the 200 HotS stations, along the sides were various booths, and towards the back of the arena was the main stage + pit. At this point we were still early so not much was happening, none of the booths were open and there seemed to be more security guards than regular people. We shuffled over to where the brackets were and looked at that, I told them that DaiSuki played zerg (WCS tourney), and then we loitered for quite a while. The HotS station wouldn't get opened for around and hour so we walked the perimeter of the building to take a look at the other game areas.

Then in comes Apollo (he looked tired) and MrBitter. None of us have ever really seen a "famous" Starcraft person before so we're all naturally stunned. We waited for them to get closer then one of us got a picture with them, I'm not entirely sure why all three of us didn't. Oh well. Moving on!

+ Show Spoiler +
Note: I'm going to skip over some people we met, otherwise this blog would get too long. I would eventually get autographs from Jinro, Stephano, Sheth, Pokebunny, and some others I can't keep track of right now.


Next we saw Sase come in and start practicing his blink micro on one of those elevated stages with a fpview monitor above his head. I usually don't watch toss players play because I play terran and hate toss, but there wasn't anything else to do so we watched him for a little while until Grubby came to face him. During the next little while we would go between the matches being played and watch another if one ended. It was too bad that MC got knocked out by Monster, we were going to ask him for an autograph but after losing he probably wouldn't be in a good mood.

Then we saw THORZAIN, not thorzain or Thorzain but THORZAIN! The spoon terran in the flesh. On streams you can tell that he's good looking but in real life he's magnificent. Perfection. And he plays terran. We inched closer to him to get his attention for an autograph, but sadly a female friend of his takes him away from us. From that point on we vowed to be more aggressive in attaining autographs. Perhaps next year I will get a piece of Thorzain, only one can hope.

Somewhere around this time I got a picture with Leenock. And we semi-stalked DRG hoping to catch him and a photo/autograph (we never did).

More watching Starcraft, bla bla bla this is getting long and still haven't written the HotsContest part.

They announced that the KESPA player signing is postponed to 4, and it was only 1. But getting something signed by gods is a once in a lifetime opportunity so we decided to wait in line for 3 hours. Usually this would lead to an extreme bout of boring nothingness but not at MLG! One of the projectors was conveniently placed where we could watch the matches, the image was flipped but starcraft is starcraft. We also took turns trying out HotS with each other, two of us would go while one stayed behind to guard our spot. Over the course of the day I would play a TvZ, TvT, PvT, ZvZ, and a PvZ. I would put the HotsContest here but that might break up the flow of the blog, so it's at the end.

The 3 hours flew by surprisingly quickly, and before we knew it there was a change in the room. Some people started clapping for something unseen to me. Then they came into view. Flash, Stork, Bisu, Jaedong, Fantasy, Soulkey, Calm, and Leta. Your heart automatically speeds up like when that girl you like steps into the room, except this is x8 because there are 8 of them. Then I entered that dream-state where you can't believe something is happening, but who cares about me when there are legends in the vicinity.

The line slugs foward bit by bit (not to be confused with the player BitByBit), and they start coming into view. I have my shirt in hand, ready to be signed. Oh wait that reminds me to tell why I had them sign my shirt and not my keyboard or something else.

Stripping for Jaedong part:

My keyboard is black and all I could find in my house was a blue sharpie. Now that wouldn't show up well right? So I grabbed something that I wouldn't mind being signed: an Angry Birds plushie of one of those green pigs you try to kill. But after getting it signed by the SC2 pros, it was running out of space and I calculated that it wouldn't be able to fit signatures by eight more people. I ran through my head things they could sign: my black bag, my black jacket, my black shorts, my face, but none of them would work. Then I looked down my jacket and saw my saviour (not to be confused with sAviOr): my white t shirt. When the time came I darted to the bathroom and took off my shirt, leaving only my jacket on. It felt weird walking around with only a jacket but it was what needed to be done. Sacrificing a shirt to have gods sign them is a pretty good trade imo.


Anyway, we gradually get to the table where they're sitting and start doing what any fanboy would do: faint. Not literally but pretty close. Being literally two feet away from Flash makes you feel like you have a million dollars. My friend took a video of all of them signing his stuff, I was after him.

My friend is Korean and tried to talk to Bisu but couldn't hear him. Then Bisu asked his age and he temporarily forgot his own age.


After getting through the line alive, it was hard not to smile. Being shirtless didn't matter at all, as long as I had my signatures.

[image loading]


After the mini-celebration guess who we spy next? Stephano! He had a line so we get in it, normally I would feel bad because he was probably tired of autographing and photos but #yolo. This is not something I get to do everyday.

In total I would get pictures with Stephano, Sheth, and Leenock.

Note: I would put the pics up but I don't feel comfortable doing it ^^. Here's one that's on the blog of Juliette though. You can probably guess who I am.

[image loading]


Sparknotes of the rest: We watched DRG win. Also saw Idra, DeMuslim, Incontrol, Anna Prosser, MKP, etc.

HotsContest

+ Show Spoiler +


This blogging is surprisingly pretty tiring. Anyway...

The HotS stations allowed you to either 1v1 someone else or to play the AI. The computers were faster than mine which was good, but you couldn't re-bind hotkeys so that kind of messed up my gameplay. Nonetheless, the reason to play was to try out the new units, not to win. Oh and there was a time limit of how long you could play.


Overall

Not sure if relevant but I'm a masters terran player if you want background.

I feel like a lot of HotS units are re-makes of BW units. For instance: spidermine=widow mine, tempest=guardian, oracle=arbiter (cloak and "stasis" minerals), viper=flying defiler (consume, dark swarm), battle hellions=firebats, and swarm host = non-splash lurker. Just my thoughts. Excited about all the other improvements though.

The new tentacle creep tumor animation is fun to look at, it looks like it's penetrating the ground to get to where it needs to go instead of just popping up.

Hydras ftw.

Terran

[image loading]
Hellion/Battle Hellion

I feel like they mesh well with the rest of the mech units. They're pretty slow in battle form and are decent meat shields. I feel like they might not do very well against a lot of banes though. I think they stay in the "light" category which means extra damage to them, but they shouldn't be way out in front anyway (players could probably focus fire the banes with tanks or use the other mech units as shields). The ability to transform makes the unit more dynamic and usable as more than just a harassment unit. Not to mention that the animation to transform is pretty cool to stare at.


[image loading]
Warhound

I used this unit in a TvZ and against it in a PvT. Added up, it's a very scary unit even for toss and it doesn't really need much micro. To me, mech in SC2 isn't going to need as much micro as SC1 mech. I see most terran players using hellions in battle mode in most head on battles so there isn't really much to micro. Even the tanks have that auto-aim to prevent from overkilling units. I guess terran will have to practice good positioning then. But I digress.


[image loading]
Widow Mine

I think in upper levels this might be pretty useless, all it will do is cause the opponent to use apm to bring the targeted unit out of his army. 10 seconds is a pretty long time to detonate imo, with the amount of times pros check their army they'll never sustain a lot of damage. Maybe in big battles, but then the opposing army can just run away and leave the infected units to hopefully kill your units chasing it. Although it will probably be very good at killing workers vs an unprepared opponent.

The range of the mine is sort of what bothers me, when I used them in TvZ the zerg units had to be almost on top of the mine for it to attach. This would be fine in some cases but don't flying units have ranged attacks to harass with? If the mine is near the mineral line then it might never attach to the unit attacking because it's too far away. (Another thing I'm wondering is that if the mine attaches to a harassing air unit, can't the player suicide it into your mineral line and kill your scvs? Unless it has friendly fire, I forgot).

Also related to map control, since the attachment range is so short, how useful will it be on big maps? You can't fill the entire map with them because that would be a waste of build time. I guess you can just put them in chokes. Never mind.


Zerg

[image loading]
Swarm Host

I don't see why they can't just spawn locusts when they see a unit to attack, but I'm not a game developer. Locusts are a pretty good unit, it can attack air which is really nice compared to the lurker. Not much to say about it, just that it allows for decent map control.

[image loading]
Viper

When I first saw the abilities of the viper I immediately thought "flying defiler". I feel like the blinding cloud ability could be a little overpowered vs rine-tank. Well the viper in general could be a little overpowered vs rine-tank. Abduct for obvious reasons, and blinding cloud because it really hurts the marine. I feel like the reason dark swarm was good was because the splash dealing lurkers were immobile and couldn't catch rines/tanks if they ran away. But banes can move, and fast on creep. I guess the rines will just have to run even farther and with no tank support since the tanks will either be abducted or with melee range in siege mode (which means they can't attack).


Protoss

Mothership Core

Toss will be able to hold their ramps easier and have templars able to storm faster. Enables toss to have more chronos for upgrades/tech/gateways. Can recall army to nexus. Can also attack.

As a biased terran player I think this is pretty OP. To me it looks like it makes 2 base timings stronger, while also make it easier to defend all-ins (because of sentry energy). The army recall also enables the toss to kill an expo then go back to their base with 0 damage taken. At least when terran snipe the expansions the army has a chance of dying, if toss does it then they can get away with maybe shield damage. And the toss already has warp-ins to deal with drops effectively, why give them another crutch to deal with drops if they make an army positioning mistake?

The mothership core ability to attack is fine imo, canons not too good at defending lol. Gives toss the extra edge if terran does a 2-3 medivac drop and the toss runs out of warpins.

[image loading]
Tempest

Honestly when I saw the stats of the tempest I thought they would be extremely OP. But in actual gameplay they're not as good as I previously thought. The range is good but they seem to be a little too expensive for the damage output. Especially in open terrain they can easily be killed, not to mention that they're kind of slow. A reason that broods/guardians were good were because they could get to behind a natural or wherever as a corrupter/muta then transform into the siege-breaker. Tempests come out slow and stay slow forever.

[image loading]
Oracle

Good unit with potential. Entomb is fun to use, though I'm not sure how much economical damage it does. Interesting to see what would happen if a toss uses multiple oracles and entombs every min line of an opponent, essentially making him have 0 mineral income.

I never really used the building vision skill.

The cloaking field is better than the mothership cloak currently. With multiple oracles able to cloak units/buildings toss can hold onto expansions easier by quickly cloaking all the probes/nexus giving vital time needed to reposition army or warp in. Zerg can abduct them, getting rid of the cloak and terran always have scan so the cloak won't be super op.

Should be easy enough to stop with good turret placement or maybe a viking ^^.



Overall I think that HotS will definitely make starcraft a more dynamic game, with a wider array of playstyles due to the types of units being introduced.

A little note about MLG: I've never been to one before (as I've said before) but the one day I did go it was beyond awesome. Everybody there just wants to have fun watching their favorite players duke it out live (the fp cams were really nice). Well, maybe the pro players are a little stressed out/tired but the audience isn't. It was also nice how there was more than just starcraft being played, the other games there made the experience more interesting.


So yup, that's about it. There might be grammatical errors and whatnot and I think i covered everything that I wanted to cover. I don't think there's anything else to explain about HotS for the contest. Thanks :D


tl;dr: too bad, not writing one

****
~_~
GangstaJim
Profile Joined March 2010
United States36 Posts
June 13 2012 05:08 GMT
#2
Very nice write up about that mlg. Also + points for it being your first. Keep it up kid
yo yo :D
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