On December 23 2012 00:29 Clazziquai10 wrote: You may need to add roach hydra zvt really soon lol
That's only effective because MKP messed up repeatedly against it.
No with the queen buff creep spread and big maps it's a viable to enter lategame, with some transition.
Stephano is starting to use it and remember what people used to say about ultralisks lol? It will be the same for that.
For the longest time, Zerg players said that Ultralisks were a terrible, god-awful unit. Now as we know, they are one of the best late game units out there and with fungal, they become even stronger. It's amazing that so many Zerg players bought into the dogma for so long, instead of trying them for themselves.
Ultras "suck" only because infestor/broodlord/corrupter is just better
God, it's been just a year since MMA vs DRG... So much has happened after and lowered the thrilling standards of TvZ. I wonder what the metagame would look like if the queen buff never existed.
Spanishiwa's gasless build deserves a footnote really, I remember when it entered the metagame and eventually created the safe gasless builds.
I think you missed the part where BL infestor firest became prominent. Then the Terran started using ghost snipe to counter but then snipe got nerfed so ghosts were again sacked.
On December 22 2012 10:47 LlamaNamedOsama wrote: Nice writeup, although you left out a part of the Slayers hellion period, where the Slayers team dominated the matchup with their hellion drop strategies (around the first MLG that started inviting koreans, I believe Columbus?). This, in combination with their insane amount of scv kills with hellions in TvT, led to the hellion nerf.
Also, forgg should get credit for the hellion-banshee opening as the new method of trying to harass when hellions alone were not enough with the post-queen buff.
It was MLG Anaheim.
Negative. It was MLG Raleigh where Mvp was the champion. Anaheim was Leenock v Naniwa, and most of that event was based around the evolution of PvZ. Mvp unveiled the build that became standard in TvZ for a long time, which was BFH into expansion. Then of course, came the BFH hellion nerf, so reactor hellions became the thing, then players starting expanding BEFORE reactor hellions, etc....
No, he's right, it was MLG Anaheim. Anaheim was the one that MVP won (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2011_MLG_Pro_Circuit/Anaheim), and Leenock vs. Naniwa was Providence. I don't think MVP "unveiled reactor hellion" into expansion because that predated the Slayers' incorporation of medivac drops for that opening to do huge early game damage, and the Slayers team used that at Anaheim.
On December 23 2012 00:29 Clazziquai10 wrote: You may need to add roach hydra zvt really soon lol
That's only effective because MKP messed up repeatedly against it.
No with the queen buff creep spread and big maps it's a viable to enter lategame, with some transition.
Stephano is starting to use it and remember what people used to say about ultralisks lol? It will be the same for that.
For the longest time, Zerg players said that Ultralisks were a terrible, god-awful unit. Now as we know, they are one of the best late game units out there and with fungal, they become even stronger. It's amazing that so many Zerg players bought into the dogma for so long, instead of trying them for themselves.
Ultras "suck" only because infestor/broodlord/corrupter is just better
Ultras "sucked", because they were really bad pre-Stephano style, as they are easily counterable if the opponent has enough time to prepare (Marauder, Siege Tanks) and really bad vs marines if not properly upgraded. Coming out 2-4 at 15min (and becoming 3-5 soon after) helped a lot - and made Terrans whine a lot about "Zerg not being supposed to get T3 that fast". Not to mention how much better "Infestor-->Ultralisk" is, compared to "Mutalisk-->Ultralisk".
On December 22 2012 10:47 LlamaNamedOsama wrote: Nice writeup, although you left out a part of the Slayers hellion period, where the Slayers team dominated the matchup with their hellion drop strategies (around the first MLG that started inviting koreans, I believe Columbus?). This, in combination with their insane amount of scv kills with hellions in TvT, led to the hellion nerf.
Also, forgg should get credit for the hellion-banshee opening as the new method of trying to harass when hellions alone were not enough with the post-queen buff.
It was MLG Anaheim.
Negative. It was MLG Raleigh where Mvp was the champion. Anaheim was Leenock v Naniwa, and most of that event was based around the evolution of PvZ. Mvp unveiled the build that became standard in TvZ for a long time, which was BFH into expansion. Then of course, came the BFH hellion nerf, so reactor hellions became the thing, then players starting expanding BEFORE reactor hellions, etc....
No, he's right, it was MLG Anaheim. Anaheim was the one that MVP won (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2011_MLG_Pro_Circuit/Anaheim), and Leenock vs. Naniwa was Providence. I don't think MVP "unveiled reactor hellion" into expansion because that predated the Slayers' incorporation of medivac drops for that opening to do huge early game damage, and the Slayers team used that at Anaheim.
Oh, you're right. I was totally sure it was Raleigh. My bad.
And I was talking about, in particular, the BFH opening which was the same as reactor hellion except you get a techlab and fast blue flame instead of the reactor. I would say that was the highlight of this MLG, as Mvp did that exclusively against every zerg player, and from that point onward, hellion openers became the standard. Overall, I would say the SlayerS hellion domination started at Anaheim and didn't become REALLY popular until the next MLG.
On December 23 2012 10:22 Azzur wrote: Very nice and detailed writeup but the OP missed the elephant in the room:
The zerg deatball of infestor/broodlord/corrupter. The OP claims that the banshee mechanic build enabled the "As a result of this, the balance at this stage has pretty much found its place". However, this is false - there was no answer to the zerg deathball.
If anyone is in doubt, read Ver's analysis of the patchzergs.
You realise that thread was satirical right?
Its easy to label something as satire if you don't agree with it. I admit the foreigner explanation was a bit far-fetched but everything else, including the invincibleness of the infestor/broodlord/corrupter is 100% true. For those in the dark, Ver is a noted BW strategic authority and the author of the brilliant "How to improve" guide.
No, it was pretty clearly satire. I play Terran and have some pretty strong opinions on late game TvZ but I can still see the manner which he wrote it was making fun of people who use the term 'patch zergs'. Hell, he named the headers after the Star Wars movies.
Yes it was a satire but no that was not my motivation. Satire can be used to push legitimate cases too. I released it to a) make people laugh at the absurdity of the situation and b) in a (forlorn) hope to get enough pressure on blizzard to remove fungal from the game and strengthen better units like muta/baneling to compensate.
On December 22 2012 14:52 FinestHour wrote: honestly, you should include some input about the infestor :0 like go more in depth on some more of its impact
Infestors only made a real impact once Zerg could tech and econ like crazy because of broken as shit queens.
Seriously, remove the queen buff and no one would be talking about Infestors at all right now.
Not sure if it is really that significant, but what about MKP bring back pure Bio play in early 2012 (.vs Curious in GSTL, and DRG in MLG etc.)? I know pure Bio wasn't exactly new at the time but it certainly wasn't popular, or thought to be viable.
On December 24 2012 21:20 noXZ wrote: Not sure if it is really that significant, but what about MKP bring back pure Bio play in early 2012 (.vs Curious in GSTL, and DRG in MLG etc.)? I know pure Bio wasn't exactly new at the time but it certainly wasn't popular, or thought to be viable.
Yeah that's true as well. Although not sure about the date, might have been last year because I remember games on Lost Temple where he never used tanks, just used Marauders to tank Banelings while Marines did the rest. At the time it was standard for marine/tanks/medivac because it was more reliable.
Probably not significant because only a couple of Terrans picked it up while nearly everyone else stayed on the standard composition.
EPT
