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Grimatoma2
United States68 Posts
On November 15 2010 17:02 gilligan156 wrote: are upgrades worth the money, do you think? they are worth the money once you hit unit cap, besides a few select ones. Stimpack is the of the few pre food cap ones. | ||
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ihasaKAROT
Netherlands4730 Posts
2 sentries (1 banes nest if alot of lings) 2 marauders 1 hellion 1 medivac 1 banshee 1 zealot mass immortals from then on, mix in a few sentries here and there | ||
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VashTS
United States1675 Posts
Edit: Errr, sorry for the pseudo-necropost. | ||
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DoomGuy
United Kingdom44 Posts
> Strategy dohohoho But in all seriousness, I always pick Zerg and when I play a game, I will ALWAYS try to make as much zerglings as I can before I tech up to Roaches or hydras. So I've been wondering, if anyone else does this, what do you think is the best time to cut off zerglings and tech up? | ||
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Flec
United States1 Post
5 banelings(as banelings do not give your opponents money, they are very effective early on) 1 ling nest Now, depending on if the enemy has gone armored or not(I.e getting immortals/marauders), If not: 10 roaches 10 zerglings Bane speed zergling speed If yes: 10 zerglings 10 roaches Bane speed Zergling speed Now, get 10 hydras Hydra range 5 queens(detection and a.a) 3 ultras ultra armor After this, the enemy is pretty much dead. You should now get a pylon and fully upgrade it, then get upgrades(start with ground armor) and continue to get upgrades until you win. If the enemy goes air: 10 infestors 20 mutas 15 corrupters As I said before, I have never lost with this strategy and had even found time to help the side I'm not working on. | ||
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Sermokala
United States13767 Posts
I've had a lot of wins from a great timeing with hellions and bansee's aloneside my marines bansee's just go behind the lines when your ground force dies or when they go air and it really really effects the enemy armies. not to mention its a hard counter to immos wearing them down so much as they reinforce. Its a really fun and basic map good for thinking and making decisions. All Air is a bit op though in late game with protoss having the best of it in void rays massed up. | ||
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Dexington
Canada7276 Posts
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leungwk01
United Kingdom1260 Posts
ling -> hydra -> mass infestors then corruptor or w.e Or you get those idiots that build structures to block a lane so it diverts all monster one lane. That's when I stopped playing. Plus it seems EU version hardly gets updated | ||
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HypertonicHydroponic
437 Posts
There are actually a few nuances to doing this really well. The best way to do this is with a team who shares control and syncs all of the units. Then you get waves of 4v2 on each lane -- guess who wins. It forces cannons and nukes really quickly and often ends the game before the 15 minute mark. Midding is not new but it seems to be more powerful now. You used to be able to only mid exactly on the center line, but now you can build with one half of your building on the centerline and still rally to either side. This allows you to build more buidlings on mid. When you do this though, you need to leave space horizontally between buildings, otherwise there will be no exit for the units on the other side of the mid line. So this means you need to learn which units require only one space between buildings, and which units require two (like thor & ultra). You also need to determine whether you want to "micro" your rally points and spawn timings in order to gain an additional advantage by building buildings in blocks of four. Building in blocks of four means you will be able to fit more ground units on the mid line, but it means you cannot just simply hotkey all your buildings and right click all the rally points up or down and forward. You will have to go back and select the rear two of each block and rally it up or down and back. If you have everything of the same timing snyced like this some units (like marauders and roaches) will not have enough room to both spawn across the mid line, so a few might wind up going to the opposite lane, this is not completely bad, but it disallows your entire army from sticking together in one lane. To fix this you will have to make the sync slightly off so that the front buildings and rear buildings spawn just a few seconds off from each other. Air buildings do not require any spaces to be rallied to either lane. Basically midding works because you force an imablance that the other team cannot match at that point of the game. Early on, you can deal with most threats on the non-rushed lane with just SCV attacking. However, the other lane will be hard pressed to hold off with just SCVs because the number and type of units used in the push are generally more than SCVs can handle. This forces cannons (or straight nukes), which unless really lucky will go down. And if they go down, they will have to nuke. Not only does this use up a nuke, but it causes economic damage. While this goes on, your team builds freely while scv attacking to fill in the missing dps in the early game. You get your pylons faster, you get a bigger army faster, and you have the flexibility of sending most of your entire force to one lane. It is really the only "strategy" element left in the game. Some call it cheese, and in a sense they are right, but while the rest of the game is essenitally trying to build blind counters, it fills in the void of control you can take over the flow of the game. And both sides have equal opportunity to abuse it. Anyway, the compositions I've found to be fairly effective at midding are: Protoss (I've found it best to get the pylon after the first or second immortal is out): Just you -- Zealot (in front of nexus), sentry (behind nexus), stalker (in front of zealot, leave a space), Immortal x4 (in front of stalker, leave a space), phoenix (next to sentry), Void ray x6 (beside buildings in front of nexus), Carrier til cap (on low ground, all clumped). You and one partner -- Same build, only your partner builds on one side of mid and you on the other, voids start on low ground, carriers finish mid, you should have 12 supply left so you and your partner can pick a side a choose what to build, I go with colussus or carrier usually. You and whole team -- Zealot (in front of nexus, all four do this, it is a very strong start), sentry (behind nexus, only two do this), Immortals x2 each (the two who do not sentry save for immortals, then the other two will catch up and build immortals), at some point the two who did not sentry may want to make one on their lane just to have some permenant detection, then all get stalker and pheonix on their side, then all Void ray x2 on low ground (can go up to x4), then carriers low until done and then on a side to finish, other stuff can be mixed in as needed when mid is done (it finishes much faster with 4 peeps building) but this should pretty easily win the game, and often does at the immortal stage. Zerg (plyon somewhere around the hydra): Just you -- zergling (pick somewhere off mid), x4-x6 roaches, 2 sentry behind (g shield & detection, queens are not usually fast enough, though if you want to be purist, queens here), finish up to x8 roaches in front (space between each pair), x2-x4 hydra (2 if did sentry, 4 if queens, fill in last 2 spots with queens if did sentry), low ground, x4 lurker (boxed), x4 infestor (boxed), 2x ultra (skip two spaces), mutalisk (on high ground), x4 broodlords in front of ultra (I usually finish out with banelings on the sid ewe are pushing for the win to help take down cannons/buildings. You and one partner -- Basically the same build but now both sides can build banelings or corruptors or race switch or whatever, really, roach rush often wins with a team doing it before 15 minute mark. With two poeple each builds one half of the above and then has PLENTY of supply left to do whatever. You and whole team -- Again, basically the same build, although, you will probably wind up filling the high ground with roaches and then win. That many roaches that fast is really powerful. Terran (pylon somewhere around the first thor, before of after, terran is hardest to be successful with when midding just as a fair warning): Just you -- reaper (behind), marine (behind next to reaper), x8 maraduer (front, x2, the box, then x2 -- you will want to micro your spawn/rallies to make this work, you will also want to get both upgrades either before or after first thor), hellion (off mid, pick a side), x2 thor (finish box with last two maraduers) x4 thors (boxed, finishes high ground), medivac (off mid, pick a side), x2 science vessle ("dingle", one on each side off mid or on mid, u pick), battlecruisers (low ground until cap) You and one partner -- Basically the same build, but you will either decide to put reapers or marines on back mid before hand and the other off mid each on one side, then everything else is built half amounts so more thors and BCs can be built low ground mid. You and a team -- Basically the same build, but two reapers will be in the back mid and all other reaper/marine will be split evenly on both sides off mid. Lost of thor BC will ensue. After mid is covered, there should be supply left to build whatever else is needed. Always remember to upgrade pylons when you can, the income boost can be the difference between success and failure, even with midding if it gets past the early game. Also remember upgrades and heros in the late game. Often you will hear not to get upgrades before you are maxed, but I think once you hit 60 supply and have a decent number of endgame units, you can begin some upgrades, though not past level 3/4 before maxing. I think a good rule of thumb is to have 3/3, lvl 4 pylon, and a kerrigan around the time you are about to max. Then after getting a kerrigan, and are at max supply, finish pylon upgrade then finish attack/armor upgrades. Anyway, I'm sure you can mid with other compositions, but these are the ones that have worked for me (again, terran is still somewhat iffy, especially alone). Once you start midding, it is really hard to go back. If you thought this was a boring game where you just build up, let your SCV sit around, and hope that no one yells "REPAIR TOP CANON PLZ!!!" until the end of the game, I urge you to try midding. Learn midding. Teach midding. I think there is a lot of untapped potential in this game that would be fleshed out with a good team midding on both sides. The only downside to midding that I can see, is that a team with shared control, while the most efficient for the pruposes of syncing and re-rallying (switching), is that the other players do not get to do as much once the lane switching has commenced. Sure, everyone is still building their own buildings, and upgrading their own upgrades, and nuking their own nukes, and microing their own heros, but the team captain has to do that and keep up the syncing and switching. That might not seem like a lot more, but it is actually quite a bit more because that person really is the carry for the team. His decision could make the game a win or a loss. That said, the game isn't really much different for the other players than if you hadn't midded, accept that you will have some extra SCV attack micro at the beginning instead of sitting around. Plus there's the increase in win rate... so all things considered, midding's pluses outweight the minuses in my eyes.  Oh, and for anyone wondering about putting cannons for the lane that is not being pushed when the whole team is pushing one side.... AVOID THIS AT ALL COSTS. You really do not need cannons until maybe the late game if you need them at all. You should be up on nukes, and your mid spawns will eventually crush the attackers from the the lane once they reach your mid line. The spawn will pop, the enemies dies, and goes down the rallied lane. You have plenty of time to attack with SCVs and repair buildings without hurting your economy with cannons 99% of the time. Concentrate on building army and econ. What would be cool is if there were some other roles that could be added to the game like the syncer/switcher so that everyone on a shared control team could do something extra to help out the win, but I'm not sure what could be done in this regard. Ideas? | ||
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Element115
1 Post
Whenever a game goes past 40 minutes it just becomes unbalanced and unplayable. I've had a bunch of games where we would be up 4 nukes to zero and come the 40 minute mark they push us somehow some way and we lose even with 4 nukes. I've used ghosts HT's everything basically and we still lose. This one game went into the 40 minute mark and the other guys had the exact same things as we did, they didn't even have a kerrigan or odin and we still lost. I even used zeratul before the 40 mark and got 2 pylons down so i mean whats up? If anyone cares to shed some insight id be very grateful. Thanks Element | ||
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HypertonicHydroponic
437 Posts
Anyway, as for why the other team might beat your exact same units? It's the upgrade war, better have maxed your top units by the time sudden death rolls around. Also, see my post above about midding. This is extremely powerful tool to use in a sudden death scenario as well (though it is designed to end the game way before that is even a thought). If the other team is ending out larger waves that can withstand two of your smaller waves on each lane you are just screwed. | ||
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Banaritaz
United States2 Posts
Middling seems to be much stronger against teams without coordination or any particular abundance of skill and/or familiarity with Nexus Wars. They simply lack the experience to handle a 3 man push on one lane. Middling simply has a huge number of weaknesses that an intelligent player can exploit. 1) With middling, your unit composition is a tad more limited both early and late game. Early because middling is awful without syncing and a "blob" effect of all your units hitting the enemy force at the same time. This is difficult to achieve without using the same units (Which is why Roach and Marauder Middling seems to be the two biggest norms). Late game simply because the strongest Land units are 2 square movers and you lack space. This lack of composition forces your teammates to fix any problems that might arise. Middlers often rely on teammates to handle Air units, stealth units, long range units and simply counters to whatever they're middling with. Middlers simply -cannot- build the proper counter to both lanes (Unless, again, the opposing team is simply not very good.) which means some of their teammates are actually doing all the work for the team. Ex. In a recent game, a teammate of mine middled roaches. He did it well, as this strategy goes, but my lane was running plenty of Immortals relatively early to handle my Stalkers (And by extension his Roaches). So I tech'd away from Heavy Armor (Templars, for the record) but the Middler obviously couldn't/didn't. Just like that, it was like I was having to 1v2 my lane because his surges of Roaches simply disappeared when they hit the line of mainly Protoss Immortal/stalker. He spent more and more time going to the other lane until is was basically a 3v1 setup. Harsh for me to play like that and we would have almost certainly lost if I hadn't been as strong a Nexus Wars player as I was (Not really bragging. I simply know how the game works.) You could argue I simply shouldn't have went Stalkers early on, but then is his strategy actually good or is it only good because I allow it to be by understanding what he's going for? That mindset is fine for teams, but it's not so good at random team set ups. 2) Middling also forces one of your lanes to be weaker. The moment you rally your units to the 2 man lane, you've weakened the one man lane for the opponent. This means it will typically get pushed over and over throughout the game. And no matter what you do, you can't make that weak lane strong again. It'll never be stronger than a typical 2 man lane. And will normally be weaker even when you're sending units there because the enemy is already balled up and pushing for your base. Middling puts a ton of pressure on the solo player to handle superior forces (And, often times, you're doing this to him without asking or communication. You're forcing a stranger to do something they didn't sign up to do, so to speak.) I'm sorry. The strategy is sound for having fun and winning games. But I typically beat middlers with straight up 2 and 2 lane pushes. This is especially true if I have a teammate and we're on the weak lane. A side note, though. Or I should say a clarification: Solo middling is generally bad and will only let you beat teams (in general) that you'd have beaten by classic play. And may even occasionally cost you games to decent players you might have otherwise won. But, and this is a huge but, a full team playing with the idea of two players middling is incredibly powerful. You gain the teamwork the strategy needs to succeed and you completely fix every problem with middling. (It's actually completely overpowered as the only counter to it is to be doing it yourself. You rarely see this, but when it happens it's frustrating.) (PS: Your note about cannons on the weak lane is almost certainly not true. I can't even imagine solo middling without using cannons on the weaker lane. Someone is going to have to cannon the weak lane unless your opponents are just really, really, really bad. I typically go so far as to ask Middlers on my team to cannon the weak lane. They chose the strategy, they should really be the ones trying to help the weak lane player, not getting upset when the solo player gets crushed as they so often do.) | ||
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Far.771
United States51 Posts
i open 3 marine. hellion. marauder. tank. banpei. banpei upgrade. then 3 thor. banpei upgrade. BC(or thor depending on their composition. this point on i'm almost ALWAYS at a huge income lead. i tend to max out thor/BC before getting the last banpei upgrade. seems the most efficient. i like my end game army to be a 50/50 thor/bc pure army. obviously castering to either thor or bcs depending on opponent composition. after maxxed 90/90. grab the last banpei upgrade. then i prefer to go for max upgrades over kerrigan. kerrigan first at this point might actually be a better fit. not sure. still tinkering with it. | ||
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Far.771
United States51 Posts
On February 10 2011 19:33 VashTS wrote: Seems like when it gets to late-game, Thor/Science Vessel is pretty dominant. Though, maybe I just got Immortals too late. Edit: Errr, sorry for the pseudo-necropost. i find units like medivacs and science vessels to actually be better early on. as they heal pretty slow. late game most units get gibbed reeeeeally quickly. even if a science vessel or medivac is on it. | ||
The_Templar
your Country52797 Posts
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PolSC2
United States634 Posts
On October 11 2011 07:26 Far.771 wrote: i've found some pretty decent timings. i open 3 marine. hellion. marauder. tank. banpei. banpei upgrade. then 3 thor. banpei upgrade. BC(or thor depending on their composition. this point on i'm almost ALWAYS at a huge income lead. i tend to max out thor/BC before getting the last banpei upgrade. seems the most efficient. i like my end game army to be a 50/50 thor/bc pure army. obviously castering to either thor or bcs depending on opponent composition. after maxxed 90/90. grab the last banpei upgrade. then i prefer to go for max upgrades over kerrigan. kerrigan first at this point might actually be a better fit. not sure. still tinkering with it. I'd say Kerry first. One game, I had 6 of them... Over an hour long game. Lol | ||
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kyunghwan
United States13 Posts
I read your post Banaritaz, and do not agree with your conclusions, and think your perspective is a result of lack of experience and understanding of Nexus War games. On October 06 2011 17:40 Banaritaz wrote: You know, I'm rather conflicted on the "Middling" strategy. Frankly, I'm typically more annoyed than anything when one of my teammates do it and can be relatively content when my opponents do it. Middling seems to be much stronger against teams without coordination or any particular abundance of skill and/or familiarity with Nexus Wars. They simply lack the experience to handle a 3 man push on one lane. Middling simply has a huge number of weaknesses that an intelligent player can exploit. First, lolll, what are you trying to say because your first sentence, second paragraph, doesn't say anything. You can insert any strategy or game plan in for middling in the second paragraph and it will hold true. And that you think the only point of middling is a 3 man push really shows the lack of your understanding of the game. 1) With middling, your unit composition is a tad more limited both early and late game. Early because middling is awful without syncing and a "blob" effect of all your units hitting the enemy force at the same time. This is difficult to achieve without using the same units (Which is why Roach and Marauder Middling seems to be the two biggest norms). Late game simply because the strongest Land units are 2 square movers and you lack space. This lack of composition forces your teammates to fix any problems that might arise. Middlers often rely on teammates to handle Air units, stealth units, long range units and simply counters to whatever they're middling with. Middlers simply -cannot- build the proper counter to both lanes (Unless, again, the opposing team is simply not very good.) which means some of their teammates are actually doing all the work for the team. Ex. In a recent game, a teammate of mine middled roaches. He did it well, as this strategy goes, but my lane was running plenty of Immortals relatively early to handle my Stalkers (And by extension his Roaches). So I tech'd away from Heavy Armor (Templars, for the record) but the Middler obviously couldn't/didn't. Just like that, it was like I was having to 1v2 my lane because his surges of Roaches simply disappeared when they hit the line of mainly Protoss Immortal/stalker. He spent more and more time going to the other lane until is was basically a 3v1 setup. Harsh for me to play like that and we would have almost certainly lost if I hadn't been as strong a Nexus Wars player as I was (Not really bragging. I simply know how the game works.) You could argue I simply shouldn't have went Stalkers early on, but then is his strategy actually good or is it only good because I allow it to be by understanding what he's going for? That mindset is fine for teams, but it's not so good at random team set ups. This is your first claim of I suppose two claims (amid, lol, a "huge number") that middling is weak. I will not discuss your example as it is not about the strategy of middling but about you and your teammate's choice of unit composition, and that later on he was just bad middler. Lack of unit composition: I do not see why the unit composition is more limited if you're middling than if you're not. Disregarding specific strategies, middling players and "classic" players can build the same units. You state that middlers must mass a single unit to be effective, and that's not true. By that logic, every player, even "classic" players should be massing a single unit, or units with the same build time, because that is most effective in creating a "blob". Middling units are much stronger when they can be synced to come out at the same time (including units of different build times), but they are still effective even if two different types of units (roach and hydra for ex.) come out at different times. Why? Because when the opposing team pushes your lane to your side, their push is weak because they have been pushing fast against a single player. Their "blob" as you call it, is weaker than if they were pushing against "classic" players. The middling player switching to the 1v2 lane should be able to overcome the small push they started. It should work because they should be close to your ramp, or even past the first ramp, and weak side now has a 2v2 lane with much faster reinforcements, if you are the solo player and an experienced player, then that should be enough to push back. Middlers can build other units, why you and I see a majority of them mass roach or marauder or something else is completely personal preference of the player. I think they simply mistake lopsided wins against bad players as evidence that their unit composition is good (and normally their syncing and building placement efficiency is also bad). As you should know, flexibility is key to getting advantages early game, and that applies to middlers as well. Finally to go with flexibility, in a random game where 1 player middles, that player should be countering what's on the solo side, not the strong side, even as they are sending units to the strong side. Early game strong lane pushes should be fast and brutal, but it cannot be at the sake of losing the weak lane, or forcing a premature, defensive cannon. 2) Middling also forces one of your lanes to be weaker. The moment you rally your units to the 2 man lane, you've weakened the one man lane for the opponent. This means it will typically get pushed over and over throughout the game. And no matter what you do, you can't make that weak lane strong again. It'll never be stronger than a typical 2 man lane. And will normally be weaker even when you're sending units there because the enemy is already balled up and pushing for your base. Middling puts a ton of pressure on the solo player to handle superior forces (And, often times, you're doing this to him without asking or communication. You're forcing a stranger to do something they didn't sign up to do, so to speak.) This second claim is where you have mistaken the side effect of middling as the purpose and completely missed why it is the best strategy to win in a random game. The point is not to make the strong lane unbelievably overwhelming (although it can be effective and works against bad teams); the point of middling is to start pushes on your weak lane, although it should be called your original lane but I will call it the weak lane for clarity, and to dissipate opposing pushes without nukes and minimal cannon support. To think of it in another way, when the opposing side starts to push from their side and getting to make a "blob", wouldn't it be nice if that you could fight those units pre-blob on your side of the map. That is the secret to middling. Allowing the opposing side to push fast and end up on your side with a weak push, then pushing back with your mid units to create a standard, "classic" push on the weak lane. I'm sorry. The strategy is sound for having fun and winning games. But I typically beat middlers with straight up 2 and 2 lane pushes. This is especially true if I have a teammate and we're on the weak lane. This is the beginning of where it becomes apparent you're mixing your personal feelings and disguising them as an objective analysis. I do not know why you are sorry, and I do not know why you state the strategy is sound for "winning games" when you try your hardest to use selective examples and bad middlers to support a personal argument. A side note, though. Or I should say a clarification: Solo middling is generally bad and will only let you beat teams (in general) that you'd have beaten by classic play. And may even occasionally cost you games to decent players you might have otherwise won. But, and this is a huge but, a full team playing with the idea of two players middling is incredibly powerful. You gain the teamwork the strategy needs to succeed and you completely fix every problem with middling. (It's actually completely overpowered as the only counter to it is to be doing it yourself. You rarely see this, but when it happens it's frustrating.) And this is just laughable in the context of your post. You spend the whole time damning a strategy in one version but state that in a different version (2 players) that it is "completely overpowered". Whether one player does it or four players do it, it is still the same strategy, the exact same core principles guide successful middlers in all versions. It's just too outrageous and humorous to see you spend your whole post providing "objective" arguments to a strategy, and then acquiesce to it in your final paragraph. Your ignorance of your lack of understanding of the game and misplaced faith in your arrogance at your perceived skill level is what compelled me to write this post. And for the record, four middling is obviously the best, not two and one on each side. Lol, just think about it, if two is good, why isn't four better. (PS: Your note about cannons on the weak lane is almost certainly not true. I can't even imagine solo middling without using cannons on the weaker lane. Someone is going to have to cannon the weak lane unless your opponents are just really, really, really bad. I typically go so far as to ask Middlers on my team to cannon the weak lane. They chose the strategy, they should really be the ones trying to help the weak lane player, not getting upset when the solo player gets crushed as they so often do.) It is most definitely true. A successful middler will rarely need cannons on the weak side, even in random games. There is no necessary criteria of really, really, really bad players needed, the criteria is how good is your middler. Middling gives more control of the flow of the game to a single player, and as long as that player is good, middling is the best strategy. Educate yourself, lol. | ||
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HypertonicHydroponic
437 Posts
On October 06 2011 17:40 Banaritaz wrote: You know, I'm rather conflicted on the "Middling" strategy. Frankly, I'm typically more annoyed than anything when one of my teammates do it and can be relatively content when my opponents do it. Middling seems to be much stronger against teams without coordination or any particular abundance of skill and/or familiarity with Nexus Wars. They simply lack the experience to handle a 3 man push on one lane. Middling simply has a huge number of weaknesses that an intelligent player can exploit. 1) With middling, your unit composition is a tad more limited both early and late game. Early because middling is awful without syncing and a "blob" effect of all your units hitting the enemy force at the same time. This is difficult to achieve without using the same units (Which is why Roach and Marauder Middling seems to be the two biggest norms). Late game simply because the strongest Land units are 2 square movers and you lack space. This lack of composition forces your teammates to fix any problems that might arise. Middlers often rely on teammates to handle Air units, stealth units, long range units and simply counters to whatever they're middling with. Middlers simply -cannot- build the proper counter to both lanes (Unless, again, the opposing team is simply not very good.) which means some of their teammates are actually doing all the work for the team. Ex. In a recent game, a teammate of mine middled roaches. He did it well, as this strategy goes, but my lane was running plenty of Immortals relatively early to handle my Stalkers (And by extension his Roaches). So I tech'd away from Heavy Armor (Templars, for the record) but the Middler obviously couldn't/didn't. Just like that, it was like I was having to 1v2 my lane because his surges of Roaches simply disappeared when they hit the line of mainly Protoss Immortal/stalker. He spent more and more time going to the other lane until is was basically a 3v1 setup. Harsh for me to play like that and we would have almost certainly lost if I hadn't been as strong a Nexus Wars player as I was (Not really bragging. I simply know how the game works.) You could argue I simply shouldn't have went Stalkers early on, but then is his strategy actually good or is it only good because I allow it to be by understanding what he's going for? That mindset is fine for teams, but it's not so good at random team set ups. 2) Middling also forces one of your lanes to be weaker. The moment you rally your units to the 2 man lane, you've weakened the one man lane for the opponent. This means it will typically get pushed over and over throughout the game. And no matter what you do, you can't make that weak lane strong again. It'll never be stronger than a typical 2 man lane. And will normally be weaker even when you're sending units there because the enemy is already balled up and pushing for your base. Middling puts a ton of pressure on the solo player to handle superior forces (And, often times, you're doing this to him without asking or communication. You're forcing a stranger to do something they didn't sign up to do, so to speak.) I'm sorry. The strategy is sound for having fun and winning games. But I typically beat middlers with straight up 2 and 2 lane pushes. This is especially true if I have a teammate and we're on the weak lane. A side note, though. Or I should say a clarification: Solo middling is generally bad and will only let you beat teams (in general) that you'd have beaten by classic play. And may even occasionally cost you games to decent players you might have otherwise won. But, and this is a huge but, a full team playing with the idea of two players middling is incredibly powerful. You gain the teamwork the strategy needs to succeed and you completely fix every problem with middling. (It's actually completely overpowered as the only counter to it is to be doing it yourself. You rarely see this, but when it happens it's frustrating.) (PS: Your note about cannons on the weak lane is almost certainly not true. I can't even imagine solo middling without using cannons on the weaker lane. Someone is going to have to cannon the weak lane unless your opponents are just really, really, really bad. I typically go so far as to ask Middlers on my team to cannon the weak lane. They chose the strategy, they should really be the ones trying to help the weak lane player, not getting upset when the solo player gets crushed as they so often do.) First of all I find it funny that your reaction to the strategy is that you are annoyed. From the sound of it you are either being partnered with midders who are rude or ineffective, which may be annoying, but should not be the the driving force behind your arguments. You need to argue from critical thought, not emotion. Please do not misunderstand me: I appreciate the fact that you put a lot of time into responding to my post in an attempt to bring counterpoint to my arguments in favor of "midding"; however, the arguments you bring to the table are ineffectual in that almost none of them are actually arguments against the strategy of midding, but rather are arguments about how to mid effectively. Now, I'm going to start a little backwards here and address this first: A side note, though. Or I should say a clarification: Solo middling is generally bad and will only let you beat teams (in general) that you'd have beaten by classic play. And may even occasionally cost you games to decent players you might have otherwise won. But, and this is a huge but, a full team playing with the idea of two players middling is incredibly powerful. You gain the teamwork the strategy needs to succeed and you completely fix every problem with middling. (It's actually completely overpowered as the only counter to it is to be doing it yourself. You rarely see this, but when it happens it's frustrating.) So you are against the strategy if done by only one person but agree it is viable if done by two or more people. Fair enough, now we have a foundation from which we can start the discussion. I agree that midding is much more effective when done as a team, whether with two, three, or four people (and I think it is stronger as you add more people to it). However, I disagree that a solo midder is ineffective per se (although I agree that a solo midder could obviously 'F' it up). I think that to get to the heart of the matter though, I am going to have to establish better the principles behind why I think midding works. I think you might understand this to a degree, but your objections combined with your disclaimer about midding working for a team says to me that you do not quite fully understand how it works. Obviously, with a team you will always have one overpowered lane and one underpowered lane (against a standard 2-up 2-down team). In this scenario, you are betting that your overpowered lane can do its damage (push to the end, force/kill canons, force nuke) before needing to switch to help the underpowered lane to turn it around. I think this is the understanding that you have with the strategy. What you do not seem to understand is how midding solo could be effective since when switching back to the weak side you are not creating an overpowering force (3v2 or 4v2) to overcome the ball that is heading toward you. So, how does midding as a concept work? It works on two main principles really: abusing defenders advantage and creating an economic lead. As a team, you also add the potential for the shear overpowering of your opponent, but this is *not* the core reason of how the strategy works. So how does this abuse defenders advantage? Well, for my illustration we are going to make everyone a roacher. Roaches, roaches, and more roaches; for all eight players; as soon as possible. So everyone makes their lings, and everyone makes their first roach. One team has a solo midder and one team is standard 2-up 2-down. For the sake of argument, we won't even consider the lings and just assume that they all cancel out (generally the lings are not part of the units placed on the mid-line so we can just put them on the weak lane for the example). So why is the 3v2 lane going to reach a critical mass strong enough to force a nuke? Why wont the 2v1 lane do the same? In the first engagement in the middle of the map, the 3v2 side is only 50% as powerful on offense whereas the 2v1 side is 100% weaker. Why should that matter? The 3v2 side is going to win its first engagement more slowly than the 2v1 side, which mean the 2v1 side will actually reach the midder's team's base faster! But this is a good thing. The reason this is a good thing is that the ball will not be very big and is easily handled with the combination of SCV attack and faster reinforcement distance. By the time the first few roaches reach a point where the SCVs can help out on the 2v1 side, the threat can be neutralized before it becomes a problem. This allows all money to be spent on army (and/or econ) as opposed to static defenses which yields no army power or increased economy. But what about the 3v2 side? Why wouldn't this suffer a similar fate to the hands of SCVs? With the 3v2 side only 50% more powerful, the first engagement is going to take longer, and with luck on the '2' side, may even net a kill. This means that the very next engagement may be on equalish footing and will take longer. This delay allows the next wave to catch up to it much sooner and makes the ball much bigger before it can reach a point where SCV attacks can enter the equation. In general, by the time this happens, it is too much for SCVs to make a real impact on the oncoming forces, hence why a canon would be forced. In terms of roaches, economically speaking, this means that the opposing team is now down two roaches. Not only is their total army now weaker, but also their income is also weaker by 6. Furthermore, this whole time, bounty from kills, in general is lopsided in your favor since they are only getting one sure kill on the weak side whereas you are getting at least two on the strong side. Then, even if at this point the midder decides to stop and solely reinforce the weak side for the rest of the game, your team is ahead because of midding. You may not be ahead by much, but as a game of exponential growth, that little seed can become a profound advantage. This is the reason why midding works as a strategy. This is the point you must contend with when arguing against the strategy. Unit composition will always be an issue. Good/bad players on either team will always be an issue. Playing well as a team, communication, coordinating your units with those of others... you will always have to do these things, none of these are issues that are the sole problem of midding. Does midding exaggerate the effect or require more emphasis on addressing these issues? Perhaps. But that does not speak to whether the strategy itself is sound or flawed. To draw an analogy from the standard multiplayer game, midding is an attempt to "macro better", if you are going to say that the strategy does not work you are going to have to prove that it will not allow you to macro better. And just to keep going with the example, lest you think that the advantage that can be gotten from midding ends there. Let's say that the money for the canon was pooled from the two players on the strong side and that the two players from the weak side have been building roaches at a constant rate and are not themselves affected economically. How does this yield a further economic advantage when the midder switches back to the weak side? Wouldn't this just make that side a draw? Well yes and no. Let's say that the weak side has been taking pressure but with SCV attack and repair they have been holding without any danger of losing a building. Now the midder switches to the weak lane. So now you have an even number of roaches to an even number of roaches, but you now have the defender's advantage working in your favor, plus SCV attack to help out. What usually happens when an evenly matched army nukes? Defender's advantage kicks in and the army begins to ball up in the opposite direction. So since the SCV's have been working your weak lane to essentially the point where it is always nuked, you will start to gain the momentum on the weak lane, *even though* you are at an equal army strength technically. And what happens as this momentum reaches the other side? That's right, more canons, and possibly a(nother) nuke. More economic damage. While this is happening, the same has been occuring on the other lane. However, that lane is economically behind by two roaches, remember? So army wise, even though they have been balling up and winning due to their defenders advantage (and perhaps the canon if it was not killed), technically, they still have a weaker army, so their push is just slightly slower. By the time they make it to the midder's team's base, the weak side should also have made it to the other base. So even if they trade nukes/canons, the midder's team is still ahead by those two roaches (exponentially). However, this is where midding can really shine, if, instead of nuking (or maybe even canoning!) the midder were to switch back to the strong lane just before the oncoming ball hits, the strong lane now has the potential to avoid economic damage whereas the weak lane is still most likely going to cause economic damage. Now this is where the strategy gets really nifty. Let's just assume that the weak lane does some damage which it most likely will. The cost of the canons needed to defend is going to be pretty steep if a nuke is not used. Whereas at home, with three full armies attacking the ball (which is still exponentially two roaches weaker), the cost to turn around the army in canons is going to be less and will most likely not need a nuke. So now we are back in the position of the early game where the ball coming toward the weak side is going to get there faster than the ball gaining momentum on the strong side. However, because of this the ball on the weak side is going to be smaller (and now has to take into account whatever economic damage it took in canons). So let's say the whole time from the beginning of the push to until the first ramp, the midder adds his army to the strong side and then once the ball hits the ramp the midder switches back to the weak side; what happens then? Well, in doing this, the midder has pretty well ensured that the strong side will do damage once again, and also will potentially stop any economic damage from occuring on the weakside once again. Even though there is a ball this time unlike at the very beginning the ball has not had much time to get very big, only a few waves worth, and it is suffering in strength from however many canons were used in defending worth of roaches (4-6? more?). So even though there is a ball, it is not a full ball, and two full armies worth of units should be enough to minimize or even prevent any economic damage on the weak side. So now for three whole pushes we have most likely caused economic damage, caused nukes, and avoided economic damage. And it is possible to rinse/repeat this once you get it going. Now once you get to this point can the other team still win with superior unit combinations, team work, and early hero units? Sure. Is it likely? No. Again, this is the point of midding: to macro better. Does the better macro player always win? No. But is he more likely to win? Yes. This is the point of the strategy. This is what you must prove to be false/inaccurate to say that it is not a good strategy. (A quick side note, not only does midding cause a general economic advantage for a given *team*, *but* it *also* give a particularly nice advantage to the midding *player*. Why is this? Because the midding player is *always* going to be getting kills, because the midding player is *always* going to be on the winning side. So not only is the midder going to be helping to create a situation that makes it easier for the team to win (the economic damage to the other team), the midder is also going to make his army/economy more effective more quickly which can help to deal with opposing tech switches that much more easily. It can also help to get upgrades, econ, heros, faster, each of which help the team in general.) @kyunghwan -- thanks for having my back, but as you can see it is both the strong push *and* the reversal that I think makes midding effective. Basically, it's having control over the yo-yo in such a way that playing standard does not allow you to have in general. Also I have tweaked my unit compositions slightly and do make changes as needed on the fly if the situation warrants, but I did find those to be generally effective and safe against most builds. | ||
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Cryosin
United States182 Posts
you are going to be breaking even the whole game until the "30 minute" mark, then you have this unstoppable blob of psi storm that kills everything in half a second. its hilarious. | ||
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HypertonicHydroponic
437 Posts
On December 07 2011 07:43 Cryosin wrote: Mass high templar. you are going to be breaking even the whole game until the "30 minute" mark, then you have this unstoppable blob of psi storm that kills everything in half a second. its hilarious. If by the "30 minute" mark you mean the 400% damage, sudden death at the 40 minute mark, yes, psi storm is increadibly strong. However, before sudden death, total psi storm with no other support is not the best idea since each storm does not stack and often times storm will be cast at the same time or on the same group of units, and any of the massive units are going to fair pretty well against them (until sudden death). But as you have to make it to sudden death for mass high templar to be effective, you will want to strategy that will keep you alive until then. Midding can do that, if not even avoid the need for sudden death strats to be an issue. | ||
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