On January 05 2014 15:08 ninazerg wrote: Birdie, this is some gritty, hardcore, soap-opera level drama. We need to drag [[Starlight]]'s good name through a pile of mud just to let him know who's in charge.
Thank you for proving my point.
Don't starting making winking faces just yet. You've only gone through phase one of your initiation. There are three phases in your rite of passage into teamliquid. Be ready for anything and everything.
Zerg: Infested Terrans are a no brainer. Queens are sometimes used vs Terran Mech to broodling all their tanks and in late game ZvZ for broodlings and ensnares.
Terran: Ghosts. only used for nukes and if you're boxer, mass lockdown. valks are decent vs an all-air from zerg and almost a must make in TvT mass air battles.
Protoss: Scouts. NEVER. MAKE. A SCOUT. EVER. Dark Archons, but they have their own place in the game. you'll probably never see them in PvT but in PvP, they're decent for feedback on HT or arbiters. PvZ, maelstrom for anti-muta or just late game PvZ for feedback on defilers, maestrom on all zerg units, and even mindcontrol.
On January 05 2014 15:08 ninazerg wrote: Birdie, this is some gritty, hardcore, soap-opera level drama. We need to drag [[Starlight]]'s good name through a pile of mud just to let him know who's in charge.
Thank you for proving my point.
Don't starting making winking faces just yet. You've only gone through phase one of your initiation. There are three phases in your rite of passage into teamliquid. Be ready for anything and everything.
I know. I'm somewhat nervous about the tasers and cattleprods I saw in the anteroom.
On January 08 2014 10:38 fencer wrote: Legitimate use of scouts in a pro game:
Supercool vid, especially the Part 2 one.
But would it have worked if forgg had even a couple of Goliaths riding along initially on that contain?
the rockmanxx wrote: There are no mid game air to ground units in BW Like the void ray or banshee So scout are useless -.-
It's odd... I remember ppl on the Blizzard forums back when SC1 and BW were released complaining about how scouts and wraiths had such a weak ground attack.
Somebody important (designer? producer?) eventually responded that with the mobility advantage, air units that could hit both ground and air HAD to have ground attacks that were that weak. Which sort of makes sense, considering that the player defending against 'the air swarm' has his anti-air ground units split between several bases and his attacking army.
Your antiair ground units may be much more cost-effective than his air in an air vs ground fight, but his air can "hit you where you ain't".
But, that never really explained why mutas have a much better ground attack for cost than scouts/wraiths
BCs and Carriers of course do have a strong ground attack. But they cost so much more, they're not very fast, and don't show up until the defending player 'has a lot of stuff' to fight them with (many spellcasters, etc).
It may be that scouts are more useful than is generally known. But I'd also imagine that they'd get used more if
1) their upgrades (speed, especially) were faster and cheaper 2) the units that scouts are best at clobbering (BCs, devs, carriers) were used more
On December 28 2013 01:19 [[Starlight]] wrote: I'm coming back to BW after being away for several years. Just curious as to the 'state of the game' in 2013 (almost 2014).
For myself, IIRC, the units I never seemed to find myself making were:
1. Queens 2. Dark Archons 3. Infested Terrans 4. Valks 5. Ghosts (don't know why, they can be pretty good) 6. Arbiters (okay yes, I should start using these more) 7. Scouts (do make these occasionally, just not often/not in big numbers)
Have things changed much since then, and some of these units are actually very popular now? If so, how are they usually employed?
You should indeed start using these more
As for me: 1.Infested Terrans 2.Scout 3.Queens 4. Ghost 5.DA
I'm still trying to make that M&M+Ghost/Obs strat work vs Protoss (semi-legit in sc2, horribly bad in BW but what did I expect). Although lockdown is pretty good vs Tosses that for some reason go reavers instead of templar. Apart from that, I never ever make ghosts. Too easy to counter, too expensive etc
Zerg: Queens. Could be cool against M&M --> goo the marines, happy Lurkers commence, but don't want to try that tbh (sounds too stupid to work anyways)
Toss: Scouts should have gotten a buff when Blizzard still patched the game but oh well, at least you can still make it as a taunt unit
(explaination of dumb strats above: I'm fucking bad at bw but love theorycrafting ---> bad combination :D)
On January 09 2014 11:17 RageCommodore wrote: I'm still trying to make that M&M+Ghost/Obs strat work vs Protoss (semi-legit in sc2, horribly bad in BW but what did I expect). Although lockdown is pretty good vs Tosses that for some reason go reavers instead of templar. Apart from that, I never ever make ghosts. Too easy to counter, too expensive etc
Zerg: Queens. Could be cool against M&M --> goo the marines, happy Lurkers commence, but don't want to try that tbh (sounds too stupid to work anyways)
Toss: Scouts should have gotten a buff when Blizzard still patched the game but oh well, at least you can still make it as a taunt unit
(explaination of dumb strats above: I'm fucking bad at bw but love theorycrafting ---> bad combination :D)
Actually, did you know that units also attack slower when they are hit with ensnare? Try it with hydralisks and a queen with ensnare sometime. It won't win you the game, because you'll still need to defiler-push or go up to ultralisks to actually make the terran leave the game.
No, I didn't know that That's interesting. Do you know how big the AS slow value is? If it's big enough it might just semicounter stim (I don't belive that though).
On January 09 2014 11:52 RageCommodore wrote: No, I didn't know that That's interesting. Do you know how big the AS slow value is? If it's big enough it might just semicounter stim (I don't belive that though).
ensnare is amazing vs m&m and the only reason it's not constantly used is that zerg is capable of winning without, and it's kinda tricky to implement queens without quite some practice. them still not being a staple zvt unit just shows how there's still room for strategic improvement.
On January 09 2014 12:39 Liquid`Drone wrote: ensnare is amazing vs m&m and the only reason it's not constantly used is that zerg is capable of winning without, and it's kinda tricky to implement queens without quite some practice. them still not being a staple zvt unit just shows how there's still room for strategic improvement.
Yeh, it's a shame that JD stopped doing it since he did it 4 times vs bio in a short period of time but it's hard to blame him when the rise of mech was happening then. :/
The queen is just the type of unit that looks so good on paper that us ICCup chobos can't figure out why the pros don't use them more. Costs less than a lurker, is lair tech unit that requires no additional building compared to standard play and has two incredible spells that in theory counters both bio and tanks. Hell, ensnare is 75 energy.
You can stop a 3tank 1vessel push using queens. It delays your defilers a bit and you have less gas because of the cost of the broodling upgrade and making 3-4 queens, but it's fun to play with. Basically they siege up outside your natural and then all their tanks die, and they can't break sunken lurker with just MnM so you're fairly solid, as long as you continued making queens after the initial 3 to cope with the future tanks he'll have coming. Of course, you only need to go up to like 6-7 queens before your defiler come out and you can break out anyway.
Then if they mech switch you can continue to broodling their tanks, which is great cos you got free tank kills every couple minutes. Dealing with irradiate can get tiresome though, so you have to work pretty hard to keep them alive.
I remember...Killer vs Sea I think, in an SRT or SSL finals, and Killer had a control group of queens. They killed a couple sets of tanks but then Sea managed to irradiate a bunch of them if I recall right, and Killer couldn't really continue to use them as effectively. I think they definitely have potential though.
What I personally want to have a go with is ensnaring bio in the midgame, I think a lurker surround against ensnared MnM is basically guaranteed engagement win, so you can be super efficient and deny the Terran any map control for a long time.