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+ Show Spoiler +On August 25 2011 13:04 Frozenserpent wrote: It's true that terran early game all-in pushes can be very hard to deal with, but that wasn't the case here. These pushes were simply not all-in whatsoever. If destiny had a good defense, major simply would have slowly retreated back, and have a good economy behind it.
Let's look at the games.
In those games, he typically got his 3rd up and running while he pushed out. Major gets his 3rd up and running before Destiny gets a secure 3rd.
Suppose Destiny destroys the push, but trades resources at a 4:5 ratio. IE Destiny loses 4000 resources worth of units for every 5000 major loses in his push. What would the situation be then? Destiny would actually still be drastically behind. Major had 74 workers at the end of the last game. 74 is pretty much the most amount of workers you would ever want at once, especially as terran. Meanwhile, Destiny had far, far less workers.
Those pushes were very regular pressure pushes in a typical TvZ build. They are fundamental to playing TvZ in a heavy macro style. But, in those games, they ended the game.
It's not because Destiny is so bad he can't handle regular pressure builds. It's because Destiny was already far, far behind by the time the pushes came out. Destiny would need to crush that push in order to have a good chance to win the game.
So let's examine what happened earlier in the games, that caused Major to be at such an overwhelming advantage.
Specifically, let's look at the last build that Major does, which I am quite familiar with on both sides of the coin. Major opens with a hellion expand, which is a very good opening. In fact it's one of my favorite TvZ openings. You see, there are many different kinds of hellion openings for T. We've seen the Slayers terrans favor blue flame hellion openings with drop. There are bfh hellion openings with a heavy count of bfh. These builds typically try to inflict massive amounts of drone damage. At the very least, they need to inflict a decent amount of economic damage or force a large enough response to make the opening worth it. The reactor hellion opening, however, is a different breed. What typically happens is you build 2-6 hellions, which you will send out, and while they are out, you are getting your 2nd up and running. The CC is actually rather fast. An important trait about this build is that there isn't a heavy commitment that must be paid for with drone blood. So you build 4-6 hellions. Even if you just snipe a single drone, you are really in a good position. You are not behind if you fail to do economic damage, provided that you do not lose those hellions for free. Those 4-6 hellions are the price for map control. You will restrict creep spread past their nat. You will prevent their lings from having free reign over the map. You will force some kind of response, whether it is a spine crawler or more lings. In fact, without the spine crawler, you can probably pick off a few lings for free. Any economic damage you inflict is merely extra. The important point is to not commit your hellions unless you think you have a good chance of inflicting damage. And that was the position Major found himself in game 4. One big mistake Destiny was timing. He did build a spine crawler, but he didn't have a 2nd queen out, and in addition, the spine crawler was a few seconds too slow. Furthermore, he had a rather low initial ling count. A great way to deal with a reactor hellion is to have a one spinecrawler up, and a handful of speedlings and a queen along with it. Destiny only had 1 queen, and it was at his main. His lings, which, iirc, was something like 2 pairs, isn't enough to stop a hellion runby. A ling/spinecrawler defense against hellion runbies works by zoning them out. They can't attempt a runby because it becomes incredibly risky. Just a handful of lings will trap the hellions, impeding their movements. Just a couple seconds of delaying the hellions will do enough damage to the runby hellions to render them very manageable and simple to deal with. Roaches were used by Destiny in previous games, and may seem like an obvious solution, but roaches aren't the ideal counter, and, in fact, I think they're quite a poor counter. If you make 2 roaches to fend off 4 hellions, you're investing 200 minerals in a roach warren, AND 200 resources of roaches, which is equivalent to the 400 resources sunk in hellions, but you don't get any map control with those roaches, and hellions add more to terran midgame than zerg adds to zerg midgame. Another aspect to keep in mind is that to get the 2 roaches out for the hellion timing, you have to have the roach warren building rather early. At that stage of zerg's economy, the bottleneck for drone production is minerals. In fact, many zergs get an early creep tumor around that time because they have excess larva if they have 2 queens and 2 hatches. Wait just a bit longer, and it isn't so bad to throw down a last minute spine crawler. Destiny, you see, doesn't have a "standard" ZvT opener. The standard openers involve a fast zergling speed upgrade. This makes it much easier to deal with hellion and marine pressure. This also gives zerg an advantage in map control. This is because Destiny doesn't have a standard style of ZvT. As we all know, he likes heavy infestor play. He wants to get to the infestor phase as soon as possible, and it is there that he can be comfortable enough to get his 3rd, harass, inflict damage, defend, tech, and get set up for the fast broodlord/infestor push. You notice, in the games before the last game, Destiny delayed his zergling speed upgrade. There are a few very good reasons why standard ZvT involves a rather fast speed upgrade. For one, marine stutter step micro makes marines very efficient against slow zerglings. With speed upgrade, marines don't become super efficient against zerglings again until the unit counts gets bigger or until stim is available. Heavy marine pressure has very little risk for the terran player if the zerg has no speed upgrade. The zerg can't punish the terran for poking in with the marines, and the terran can poke in and get free units this way, unless zerg invests in a couple spines. And there are other good reasons for faster ling speed, such as reapers and hellions. Naturally, Major, who's regularly employed reaper and hellion openings in the past, sought fit to punish Destiny for this hole in his early game. The hellions and the reapers are not unusual builds. They would do quite fine against a standard ZvT build, even when the zerg player is fully prepared. If zerg gets late speed, however, they suddenly become very, very deadly. This explains a lot of why Destiny lost games 2 and 3. And the thing that absolutely convinced Destiny that he had to change his opening build game 4, was that Major didn't need to sacrifice anything significant for that capability. He was playing a TvZ build that is very solid and will match up just fine against a solid ZvT build. So Destiny had to adjust game 4 and get his speed upgrade earlier. However, his timings for the lings was a bit off and he took a lot of damage, putting him at a disadvantage. Major followed up his highly successful hellion harass with single banshee harass. This follow up is fairly popular and is rather macro oriented. The idea is that there is no tech cost for the banshee; everything necessary for banshee production is already there. The tech lab is going to be used for stim. The starport is going to be used for medivac production. But if you use the starport and the techlab for a short period, you only need to spend 150/100 for a banshee. This is 250 units of resources. A standard TvZ build doesn't need a heavy gas count at this period, so the gas cost isn't significant. The banshee goes out and can guarantee a couple of drone kills without dying. It is just a very minor harass, typically. The idea is that scv production is limited compared to zerg drone production. Shaving a couple drones here and there will add up, keeping the terran at an ok position against the zerg. Shave a bit more than needed with some good maneuvering and tactics, and then you're looking at a slight economic advantage against zerg. Furthermore, the single banshee isn't bad later on. It can continue harassment until mutalisks come out. If you keep it around, it does some nice dps, and it can delay a 3rd for a little bit. Banshee comes in, and Destiny only has one queen, with no creep spread between the main and nat. ZvT builds typically involve hatch-first with 2 early queens. You get enough energy to drop one creep tumor before you need to spend the rest of the energy for larva injects. That one creep tumor will make its way from the main, connect the natural, and then make its way out or, more usefully, connect creep towards a potential 3rd. For a map like tald'arim, you can get a nice creep spread to the 3rd by the time you want to take it, making it safer against harass. That main-to-nat creep connection is specifically for queens to defend against drops and banshees. Queens are actually very good AA units. Banshee harass and drop harass can be very deadly and difficult to deal with without this creep spread. Destiny had only one queen at his main, and no creep spread. That banshee harass turned from what typically is just minor, but steady harass, into something more significant. Along with all the drones lost to the hellions, the damage done by the banshee was devastating. By this time, it was Major's game to lose. So long as he didn't make any critical mistake, or get massively outplayed in some way, he was going to win the game.
Major's push was just him playing as he is supposed to. If it got defended, he would have several more shots left available.
Nice write-up. Seems like Destiny didn't handle the early game properly. Great to see a post in here that isn't tainted by all the Destiny love/hate.
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On August 25 2011 15:23 Maghetti wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2011 12:58 LicH. wrote:On August 25 2011 12:51 OscarN wrote: Let me guess, destiny did a infestor two base, all four games? *tried to do two base infestor :D From what I see with that style it really is similar to the protoss deathball that was murdering zergs for awhile. If you can get the near perfect zerg army of infestors and broodlords up you have a pretty sick good army, but there is no way the way destiny does it will work. You have to step by step move towards that army starting with armies of other units, expanding, etc, else you get killed by timing pushes. No one should ever play a pure macro game against destiny style, you should always smash it in the beginning because it is gimmicky, reckless, and weak to early pushes. The style only really seems to work when opponents are not used to it IMO or destiny pulls a miracle defense.
That is exactly what I've always thought, he plays it very deathball style which is exactly what many zerg's cry about for protoss. I find it kind of ironic.
Nonetheless, I wonder why Destiny's style is so unique compared to other zergs? is it because of it's weakness to early timing pushes?
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Until now I had thought that Destiny had an endgame. He was waiting out macro play and light harassment for his mid to late window to win. But if he thinks that he can cut corners (skip roaches, lings, mutas) and still should be able to beat aggressive early siege tank pushes with his late game strategy then he's a fucking retard. Everything about this game is using your resources to defeat your opponent and that involves taking risks.
He wants to hold off siege tanks without roaches, lings, or mutas but he also wants to tech fast to infestor broodlord. In what universe does that make sense? What would be the point of the game if that were possible?
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On August 25 2011 15:28 wats0n wrote: Until now I had thought that Destiny had an endgame. He was waiting out macro play and light harassment for his mid to late window to win. But if he thinks that he can cut corners (skip roaches, lings, mutas) and still should be able to beat aggressive early siege tank pushes with his late game strategy then he's a fucking retard. Everything about this game is using your resources to defeat your opponent and that involves taking risks.
Just because there are risks doesn't mean that there aren't rock-solid things that can be done regardless of what your opponent is doing.
edit: once again you're not playing against an opponent who can just do w.e the fuck he wants. he's playing the same game as you the same rules apply to him as to you if you can apply deduction and reasoning to information that you gather from him you can regularly cut a ton of corners.
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On August 25 2011 15:29 Kiarip wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2011 15:28 wats0n wrote: Until now I had thought that Destiny had an endgame. He was waiting out macro play and light harassment for his mid to late window to win. But if he thinks that he can cut corners (skip roaches, lings, mutas) and still should be able to beat aggressive early siege tank pushes with his late game strategy then he's a fucking retard. Everything about this game is using your resources to defeat your opponent and that involves taking risks. Just because there are risks doesn't mean that there aren't rock-solid things that can be done regardless of what your opponent is doing.
Duh. That's my argument. You need to understand the deconstructed meaning of his build. He's making a decision to skip all early game defensive units to get to a lategame winning strategy. That's he plan. You can't do that and at the same time defend siege pushes then when it doesn't work start whining for hours on your stream about the state of the game and how your build should be able to do both.
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Uh not to put down destiny but you cant expect to play T to play a macro game after they get a silly number of reaper or harass kills. Once you drag the worker count down to terrans level you can just lean on the zerg to stop his economy from outpacing your own and then smash them with a push. Picking taldarim as the last map wasnt the greatest choice either ):
Major played really well that series though so I guess hes been practicing alot and is ready for MLG. Whereas destiny still has alot of work to be done before he reaches majors level of refinement.
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On August 25 2011 15:32 wats0n wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2011 15:29 Kiarip wrote:On August 25 2011 15:28 wats0n wrote: Until now I had thought that Destiny had an endgame. He was waiting out macro play and light harassment for his mid to late window to win. But if he thinks that he can cut corners (skip roaches, lings, mutas) and still should be able to beat aggressive early siege tank pushes with his late game strategy then he's a fucking retard. Everything about this game is using your resources to defeat your opponent and that involves taking risks. Just because there are risks doesn't mean that there aren't rock-solid things that can be done regardless of what your opponent is doing. Duh. That's my argument. You need to understand the deconstructed meaning of his build. He's making a decision to skip all early game defensive units to get to a lategame winning strategy. That's he plan. You can't do that and at the same time defend siege pushes then when it doesn't work start whining for hours on your stream about the state of the game and how your build should be able to do both.
Well if he had perfect info he wouldn't have skipped all defense
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On August 25 2011 15:35 Kiarip wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2011 15:32 wats0n wrote:On August 25 2011 15:29 Kiarip wrote:On August 25 2011 15:28 wats0n wrote: Until now I had thought that Destiny had an endgame. He was waiting out macro play and light harassment for his mid to late window to win. But if he thinks that he can cut corners (skip roaches, lings, mutas) and still should be able to beat aggressive early siege tank pushes with his late game strategy then he's a fucking retard. Everything about this game is using your resources to defeat your opponent and that involves taking risks. Just because there are risks doesn't mean that there aren't rock-solid things that can be done regardless of what your opponent is doing. Duh. That's my argument. You need to understand the deconstructed meaning of his build. He's making a decision to skip all early game defensive units to get to a lategame winning strategy. That's he plan. You can't do that and at the same time defend siege pushes then when it doesn't work start whining for hours on your stream about the state of the game and how your build should be able to do both. Well if he had perfect info he wouldn't have skipped all defense
Yes, if he somehow had a way to perfectly deduce what the terran was doing the terran would have no way of stopping his corner cutting to lategame units. And what a wonderful game that would be.
Just think, everyone going ling, bling, muta and delaying broodlords until later is only doing it because they're not dumb enough to have no early game defense and publicly stream that for the entire world to see.
And just so we don't wander to far from the strategy debate. You have to use units to gain information however you can. Strategically sacrificing overlords is part of the game.
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On August 25 2011 15:35 Kiarip wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2011 15:32 wats0n wrote:On August 25 2011 15:29 Kiarip wrote:On August 25 2011 15:28 wats0n wrote: Until now I had thought that Destiny had an endgame. He was waiting out macro play and light harassment for his mid to late window to win. But if he thinks that he can cut corners (skip roaches, lings, mutas) and still should be able to beat aggressive early siege tank pushes with his late game strategy then he's a fucking retard. Everything about this game is using your resources to defeat your opponent and that involves taking risks. Just because there are risks doesn't mean that there aren't rock-solid things that can be done regardless of what your opponent is doing. Duh. That's my argument. You need to understand the deconstructed meaning of his build. He's making a decision to skip all early game defensive units to get to a lategame winning strategy. That's he plan. You can't do that and at the same time defend siege pushes then when it doesn't work start whining for hours on your stream about the state of the game and how your build should be able to do both. Well if he had perfect info he wouldn't have skipped all defense He will never have perfect info but if he did and saw the early pushes coming then he would be forced to play a normal game and not be able to rush to the mid game. You can't just skip the mid game. People make lings and banelings and mutas, etc for a reason. Either he makes those units and can't rush to infestors or he rushes to infestors and early pushes will kill him.
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Major 3-0, major's got the artosis blessing man
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On August 25 2011 15:43 Maghetti wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2011 15:35 Kiarip wrote:On August 25 2011 15:32 wats0n wrote:On August 25 2011 15:29 Kiarip wrote:On August 25 2011 15:28 wats0n wrote: Until now I had thought that Destiny had an endgame. He was waiting out macro play and light harassment for his mid to late window to win. But if he thinks that he can cut corners (skip roaches, lings, mutas) and still should be able to beat aggressive early siege tank pushes with his late game strategy then he's a fucking retard. Everything about this game is using your resources to defeat your opponent and that involves taking risks. Just because there are risks doesn't mean that there aren't rock-solid things that can be done regardless of what your opponent is doing. Duh. That's my argument. You need to understand the deconstructed meaning of his build. He's making a decision to skip all early game defensive units to get to a lategame winning strategy. That's he plan. You can't do that and at the same time defend siege pushes then when it doesn't work start whining for hours on your stream about the state of the game and how your build should be able to do both. Well if he had perfect info he wouldn't have skipped all defense He will never have perfect info but if he did and saw the early pushes coming then he would be forced to play a normal game and not be able to rush to the mid game. You can't just skip the mid game. People make lings and banelings and mutas, etc for a reason. Either he makes those units and can't rush to infestors or he rushes to infestors and early pushes will kill him.
you can defend some stuff with infestors. There's still some stuff to be solved, being stubborn with your strategies once in a while isn't a bad thing
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On August 25 2011 15:49 Kiarip wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2011 15:43 Maghetti wrote:On August 25 2011 15:35 Kiarip wrote:On August 25 2011 15:32 wats0n wrote:On August 25 2011 15:29 Kiarip wrote:On August 25 2011 15:28 wats0n wrote: Until now I had thought that Destiny had an endgame. He was waiting out macro play and light harassment for his mid to late window to win. But if he thinks that he can cut corners (skip roaches, lings, mutas) and still should be able to beat aggressive early siege tank pushes with his late game strategy then he's a fucking retard. Everything about this game is using your resources to defeat your opponent and that involves taking risks. Just because there are risks doesn't mean that there aren't rock-solid things that can be done regardless of what your opponent is doing. Duh. That's my argument. You need to understand the deconstructed meaning of his build. He's making a decision to skip all early game defensive units to get to a lategame winning strategy. That's he plan. You can't do that and at the same time defend siege pushes then when it doesn't work start whining for hours on your stream about the state of the game and how your build should be able to do both. Well if he had perfect info he wouldn't have skipped all defense He will never have perfect info but if he did and saw the early pushes coming then he would be forced to play a normal game and not be able to rush to the mid game. You can't just skip the mid game. People make lings and banelings and mutas, etc for a reason. Either he makes those units and can't rush to infestors or he rushes to infestors and early pushes will kill him. you can defend some stuff with infestors. There's still some stuff to be solved, being stubborn with your strategies once in a while isn't a bad thing You can defend great with infestors but I never said otherwise. I said you will not ever get infestors up when you are dying to timing pushes before infestors are up. You either make defensive units, zergling, baneling, etc and delay infestor tech to a more normal time, or you rush to them and die before you ever have them, or if you do manage to get some up, not enough to defend.
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On August 25 2011 16:03 Maghetti wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2011 15:49 Kiarip wrote:On August 25 2011 15:43 Maghetti wrote:On August 25 2011 15:35 Kiarip wrote:On August 25 2011 15:32 wats0n wrote:On August 25 2011 15:29 Kiarip wrote:On August 25 2011 15:28 wats0n wrote: Until now I had thought that Destiny had an endgame. He was waiting out macro play and light harassment for his mid to late window to win. But if he thinks that he can cut corners (skip roaches, lings, mutas) and still should be able to beat aggressive early siege tank pushes with his late game strategy then he's a fucking retard. Everything about this game is using your resources to defeat your opponent and that involves taking risks. Just because there are risks doesn't mean that there aren't rock-solid things that can be done regardless of what your opponent is doing. Duh. That's my argument. You need to understand the deconstructed meaning of his build. He's making a decision to skip all early game defensive units to get to a lategame winning strategy. That's he plan. You can't do that and at the same time defend siege pushes then when it doesn't work start whining for hours on your stream about the state of the game and how your build should be able to do both. Well if he had perfect info he wouldn't have skipped all defense He will never have perfect info but if he did and saw the early pushes coming then he would be forced to play a normal game and not be able to rush to the mid game. You can't just skip the mid game. People make lings and banelings and mutas, etc for a reason. Either he makes those units and can't rush to infestors or he rushes to infestors and early pushes will kill him. you can defend some stuff with infestors. There's still some stuff to be solved, being stubborn with your strategies once in a while isn't a bad thing You can defend great with infestors but I never said otherwise. I said you will not ever get infestors up when you are dying to timing pushes before infestors are up. You either make defensive units, zergling, baneling, etc and delay infestor tech to a more normal time, or you rush to them and die before you ever have them, or if you do manage to get some up, not enough to defend. You've got it man! Infestors are great, but by the time you have them, you would have died 10 times over
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On August 25 2011 15:45 xza wrote: Major 3-0, major's got the artosis blessing man
No, it's 3-1.
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On August 26 2011 00:41 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2011 15:45 xza wrote: Major 3-0, major's got the artosis blessing man No, it's 3-1. Probably should have been 3-0 tbh, destiny got pretty damn lucky catching 10 vikings with fungal when they poked out for half a second. Major had been denying the 5th and 6th and just killed destiny's third, and most likely would have won the game if he survived that final attack.
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Its not the late or non-existings lingspeed that made him loose to the helion into banshee. Its the fact that he only hade 1 queen.
The usual way to defend is that when you see the helions coming, move your workers away from the exp into the main, and block the ramp with 2 queens; as you wait for 1 or 2 spines to finish. You also know that the usual follow up is banshee, if uncertain you could try to scout for it; but it will be banshees without cloak and in preparatin you get a third queen; possibly a forth.
Do you know how I now? I learnt it from watching Destinys stream way back when he was still experimenting with diffrent builds. I dont know why he didnt do that know, if it was a misstake, bad scouting or just a BO-diffrence that made it impossible. But im quite sure he can handle that strat withouth wasting gas on ling speed until he wants to.
The reaper would be harder to handle withouth speed, but a 2nd queen would definately help, its simply ridiculous that a reaper gets to kill 7 drones in the first harass and then gets away alive. Let one chase, and place the other among the workers and the reaper wont be able to do much harm. Not sure about the timing of that though; maybe its to early for a 2nd queen to defend that initial harass. But have the 1 queen among the drones and let slowlings give chase on creep should work aswell.
Basically I feel that there are small tweaks, in addition to play and scout better, that he can do to fix this "hole" in his strategy, its not broken. A 2nd queen earlier (and creep between bases), better scouting. Although I dont have Destinys sharp analytical skill so im sure he probably have some ideas of improvement allready; and hopefully we will see him doing well at Raleigh.
I love when Destiny gets a real beating, because he always comes out of it better than ever; he needs to be manhandled from time to time to challenge himself to be better. And that is why I hope he joins a good team in the near future; some good manhandling can only do him good.
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On August 25 2011 13:04 Frozenserpent wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2011 12:03 BlueHydra wrote:On August 25 2011 12:02 Ghoststrikes wrote:I didn't see game 1, but + Show Spoiler +Major totally outclassed destiny in games 2-4 Outclass? he just did early game pushes that every zerg has trouble with. It's true that terran early game all-in pushes can be very hard to deal with, but that wasn't the case here. These pushes were simply not all-in whatsoever. If destiny had a good defense, major simply would have slowly retreated back, and have a good economy behind it. Let's look at the games. In those games, he typically got his 3rd up and running while he pushed out. Major gets his 3rd up and running before Destiny gets a secure 3rd. Suppose Destiny destroys the push, but trades resources at a 4:5 ratio. IE Destiny loses 4000 resources worth of units for every 5000 major loses in his push. What would the situation be then? Destiny would actually still be drastically behind. Major had 74 workers at the end of the last game. 74 is pretty much the most amount of workers you would ever want at once, especially as terran. Meanwhile, Destiny had far, far less workers. Those pushes were very regular pressure pushes in a typical TvZ build. They are fundamental to playing TvZ in a heavy macro style. But, in those games, they ended the game. It's not because Destiny is so bad he can't handle regular pressure builds. It's because Destiny was already far, far behind by the time the pushes came out. Destiny would need to crush that push in order to have a good chance to win the game. So let's examine what happened earlier in the games, that caused Major to be at such an overwhelming advantage. Specifically, let's look at the last build that Major does, which I am quite familiar with on both sides of the coin. Major opens with a hellion expand, which is a very good opening. In fact it's one of my favorite TvZ openings. You see, there are many different kinds of hellion openings for T. We've seen the Slayers terrans favor blue flame hellion openings with drop. There are bfh hellion openings with a heavy count of bfh. These builds typically try to inflict massive amounts of drone damage. At the very least, they need to inflict a decent amount of economic damage or force a large enough response to make the opening worth it. The reactor hellion opening, however, is a different breed. What typically happens is you build 2-6 hellions, which you will send out, and while they are out, you are getting your 2nd up and running. The CC is actually rather fast. An important trait about this build is that there isn't a heavy commitment that must be paid for with drone blood. So you build 4-6 hellions. Even if you just snipe a single drone, you are really in a good position. You are not behind if you fail to do economic damage, provided that you do not lose those hellions for free. Those 4-6 hellions are the price for map control. You will restrict creep spread past their nat. You will prevent their lings from having free reign over the map. You will force some kind of response, whether it is a spine crawler or more lings. In fact, without the spine crawler, you can probably pick off a few lings for free. Any economic damage you inflict is merely extra. The important point is to not commit your hellions unless you think you have a good chance of inflicting damage. And that was the position Major found himself in game 4. One big mistake Destiny was timing. He did build a spine crawler, but he didn't have a 2nd queen out, and in addition, the spine crawler was a few seconds too slow. Furthermore, he had a rather low initial ling count. A great way to deal with a reactor hellion is to have a one spinecrawler up, and a handful of speedlings and a queen along with it. Destiny only had 1 queen, and it was at his main. His lings, which, iirc, was something like 2 pairs, isn't enough to stop a hellion runby. A ling/spinecrawler defense against hellion runbies works by zoning them out. They can't attempt a runby because it becomes incredibly risky. Just a handful of lings will trap the hellions, impeding their movements. Just a couple seconds of delaying the hellions will do enough damage to the runby hellions to render them very manageable and simple to deal with. Roaches were used by Destiny in previous games, and may seem like an obvious solution, but roaches aren't the ideal counter, and, in fact, I think they're quite a poor counter. If you make 2 roaches to fend off 4 hellions, you're investing 200 minerals in a roach warren, AND 200 resources of roaches, which is equivalent to the 400 resources sunk in hellions, but you don't get any map control with those roaches, and hellions add more to terran midgame than zerg adds to zerg midgame. Another aspect to keep in mind is that to get the 2 roaches out for the hellion timing, you have to have the roach warren building rather early. At that stage of zerg's economy, the bottleneck for drone production is minerals. In fact, many zergs get an early creep tumor around that time because they have excess larva if they have 2 queens and 2 hatches. Wait just a bit longer, and it isn't so bad to throw down a last minute spine crawler. Destiny, you see, doesn't have a "standard" ZvT opener. The standard openers involve a fast zergling speed upgrade. This makes it much easier to deal with hellion and marine pressure. This also gives zerg an advantage in map control. This is because Destiny doesn't have a standard style of ZvT. As we all know, he likes heavy infestor play. He wants to get to the infestor phase as soon as possible, and it is there that he can be comfortable enough to get his 3rd, harass, inflict damage, defend, tech, and get set up for the fast broodlord/infestor push. You notice, in the games before the last game, Destiny delayed his zergling speed upgrade. There are a few very good reasons why standard ZvT involves a rather fast speed upgrade. For one, marine stutter step micro makes marines very efficient against slow zerglings. With speed upgrade, marines don't become super efficient against zerglings again until the unit counts gets bigger or until stim is available. Heavy marine pressure has very little risk for the terran player if the zerg has no speed upgrade. The zerg can't punish the terran for poking in with the marines, and the terran can poke in and get free units this way, unless zerg invests in a couple spines. And there are other good reasons for faster ling speed, such as reapers and hellions. Naturally, Major, who's regularly employed reaper and hellion openings in the past, sought fit to punish Destiny for this hole in his early game. The hellions and the reapers are not unusual builds. They would do quite fine against a standard ZvT build, even when the zerg player is fully prepared. If zerg gets late speed, however, they suddenly become very, very deadly. This explains a lot of why Destiny lost games 2 and 3. And the thing that absolutely convinced Destiny that he had to change his opening build game 4, was that Major didn't need to sacrifice anything significant for that capability. He was playing a TvZ build that is very solid and will match up just fine against a solid ZvT build. So Destiny had to adjust game 4 and get his speed upgrade earlier. However, his timings for the lings was a bit off and he took a lot of damage, putting him at a disadvantage. Major followed up his highly successful hellion harass with single banshee harass. This follow up is fairly popular and is rather macro oriented. The idea is that there is no tech cost for the banshee; everything necessary for banshee production is already there. The tech lab is going to be used for stim. The starport is going to be used for medivac production. But if you use the starport and the techlab for a short period, you only need to spend 150/100 for a banshee. This is 250 units of resources. A standard TvZ build doesn't need a heavy gas count at this period, so the gas cost isn't significant. The banshee goes out and can guarantee a couple of drone kills without dying. It is just a very minor harass, typically. The idea is that scv production is limited compared to zerg drone production. Shaving a couple drones here and there will add up, keeping the terran at an ok position against the zerg. Shave a bit more than needed with some good maneuvering and tactics, and then you're looking at a slight economic advantage against zerg. Furthermore, the single banshee isn't bad later on. It can continue harassment until mutalisks come out. If you keep it around, it does some nice dps, and it can delay a 3rd for a little bit. Banshee comes in, and Destiny only has one queen, with no creep spread between the main and nat. ZvT builds typically involve hatch-first with 2 early queens. You get enough energy to drop one creep tumor before you need to spend the rest of the energy for larva injects. That one creep tumor will make its way from the main, connect the natural, and then make its way out or, more usefully, connect creep towards a potential 3rd. For a map like tald'arim, you can get a nice creep spread to the 3rd by the time you want to take it, making it safer against harass. That main-to-nat creep connection is specifically for queens to defend against drops and banshees. Queens are actually very good AA units. Banshee harass and drop harass can be very deadly and difficult to deal with without this creep spread. Destiny had only one queen at his main, and no creep spread. That banshee harass turned from what typically is just minor, but steady harass, into something more significant. Along with all the drones lost to the hellions, the damage done by the banshee was devastating. By this time, it was Major's game to lose. So long as he didn't make any critical mistake, or get massively outplayed in some way, he was going to win the game. Major's push was just him playing as he is supposed to. If it got defended, he would have several more shots left available.
I was going to comment about the games but after ive seen this post I think there's nothing much to add.
Best post so far ive seen in TL, congratulations.
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On August 25 2011 13:04 Frozenserpent wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2011 12:03 BlueHydra wrote:On August 25 2011 12:02 Ghoststrikes wrote:I didn't see game 1, but + Show Spoiler +Major totally outclassed destiny in games 2-4 Outclass? he just did early game pushes that every zerg has trouble with. It's true that terran early game all-in pushes can be very hard to deal with, but that wasn't the case here. These pushes were simply not all-in whatsoever. If destiny had a good defense, major simply would have slowly retreated back, and have a good economy behind it. Let's look at the games. In those games, he typically got his 3rd up and running while he pushed out. Major gets his 3rd up and running before Destiny gets a secure 3rd. Suppose Destiny destroys the push, but trades resources at a 4:5 ratio. IE Destiny loses 4000 resources worth of units for every 5000 major loses in his push. What would the situation be then? Destiny would actually still be drastically behind. Major had 74 workers at the end of the last game. 74 is pretty much the most amount of workers you would ever want at once, especially as terran. Meanwhile, Destiny had far, far less workers. Those pushes were very regular pressure pushes in a typical TvZ build. They are fundamental to playing TvZ in a heavy macro style. But, in those games, they ended the game. It's not because Destiny is so bad he can't handle regular pressure builds. It's because Destiny was already far, far behind by the time the pushes came out. Destiny would need to crush that push in order to have a good chance to win the game. So let's examine what happened earlier in the games, that caused Major to be at such an overwhelming advantage. Specifically, let's look at the last build that Major does, which I am quite familiar with on both sides of the coin. Major opens with a hellion expand, which is a very good opening. In fact it's one of my favorite TvZ openings. You see, there are many different kinds of hellion openings for T. We've seen the Slayers terrans favor blue flame hellion openings with drop. There are bfh hellion openings with a heavy count of bfh. These builds typically try to inflict massive amounts of drone damage. At the very least, they need to inflict a decent amount of economic damage or force a large enough response to make the opening worth it. The reactor hellion opening, however, is a different breed. What typically happens is you build 2-6 hellions, which you will send out, and while they are out, you are getting your 2nd up and running. The CC is actually rather fast. An important trait about this build is that there isn't a heavy commitment that must be paid for with drone blood. So you build 4-6 hellions. Even if you just snipe a single drone, you are really in a good position. You are not behind if you fail to do economic damage, provided that you do not lose those hellions for free. Those 4-6 hellions are the price for map control. You will restrict creep spread past their nat. You will prevent their lings from having free reign over the map. You will force some kind of response, whether it is a spine crawler or more lings. In fact, without the spine crawler, you can probably pick off a few lings for free. Any economic damage you inflict is merely extra. The important point is to not commit your hellions unless you think you have a good chance of inflicting damage. And that was the position Major found himself in game 4. One big mistake Destiny was timing. He did build a spine crawler, but he didn't have a 2nd queen out, and in addition, the spine crawler was a few seconds too slow. Furthermore, he had a rather low initial ling count. A great way to deal with a reactor hellion is to have a one spinecrawler up, and a handful of speedlings and a queen along with it. Destiny only had 1 queen, and it was at his main. His lings, which, iirc, was something like 2 pairs, isn't enough to stop a hellion runby. A ling/spinecrawler defense against hellion runbies works by zoning them out. They can't attempt a runby because it becomes incredibly risky. Just a handful of lings will trap the hellions, impeding their movements. Just a couple seconds of delaying the hellions will do enough damage to the runby hellions to render them very manageable and simple to deal with. Roaches were used by Destiny in previous games, and may seem like an obvious solution, but roaches aren't the ideal counter, and, in fact, I think they're quite a poor counter. If you make 2 roaches to fend off 4 hellions, you're investing 200 minerals in a roach warren, AND 200 resources of roaches, which is equivalent to the 400 resources sunk in hellions, but you don't get any map control with those roaches, and hellions add more to terran midgame than zerg adds to zerg midgame. Another aspect to keep in mind is that to get the 2 roaches out for the hellion timing, you have to have the roach warren building rather early. At that stage of zerg's economy, the bottleneck for drone production is minerals. In fact, many zergs get an early creep tumor around that time because they have excess larva if they have 2 queens and 2 hatches. Wait just a bit longer, and it isn't so bad to throw down a last minute spine crawler. Destiny, you see, doesn't have a "standard" ZvT opener. The standard openers involve a fast zergling speed upgrade. This makes it much easier to deal with hellion and marine pressure. This also gives zerg an advantage in map control. This is because Destiny doesn't have a standard style of ZvT. As we all know, he likes heavy infestor play. He wants to get to the infestor phase as soon as possible, and it is there that he can be comfortable enough to get his 3rd, harass, inflict damage, defend, tech, and get set up for the fast broodlord/infestor push. You notice, in the games before the last game, Destiny delayed his zergling speed upgrade. There are a few very good reasons why standard ZvT involves a rather fast speed upgrade. For one, marine stutter step micro makes marines very efficient against slow zerglings. With speed upgrade, marines don't become super efficient against zerglings again until the unit counts gets bigger or until stim is available. Heavy marine pressure has very little risk for the terran player if the zerg has no speed upgrade. The zerg can't punish the terran for poking in with the marines, and the terran can poke in and get free units this way, unless zerg invests in a couple spines. And there are other good reasons for faster ling speed, such as reapers and hellions. Naturally, Major, who's regularly employed reaper and hellion openings in the past, sought fit to punish Destiny for this hole in his early game. The hellions and the reapers are not unusual builds. They would do quite fine against a standard ZvT build, even when the zerg player is fully prepared. If zerg gets late speed, however, they suddenly become very, very deadly. This explains a lot of why Destiny lost games 2 and 3. And the thing that absolutely convinced Destiny that he had to change his opening build game 4, was that Major didn't need to sacrifice anything significant for that capability. He was playing a TvZ build that is very solid and will match up just fine against a solid ZvT build. So Destiny had to adjust game 4 and get his speed upgrade earlier. However, his timings for the lings was a bit off and he took a lot of damage, putting him at a disadvantage. Major followed up his highly successful hellion harass with single banshee harass. This follow up is fairly popular and is rather macro oriented. The idea is that there is no tech cost for the banshee; everything necessary for banshee production is already there. The tech lab is going to be used for stim. The starport is going to be used for medivac production. But if you use the starport and the techlab for a short period, you only need to spend 150/100 for a banshee. This is 250 units of resources. A standard TvZ build doesn't need a heavy gas count at this period, so the gas cost isn't significant. The banshee goes out and can guarantee a couple of drone kills without dying. It is just a very minor harass, typically. The idea is that scv production is limited compared to zerg drone production. Shaving a couple drones here and there will add up, keeping the terran at an ok position against the zerg. Shave a bit more than needed with some good maneuvering and tactics, and then you're looking at a slight economic advantage against zerg. Furthermore, the single banshee isn't bad later on. It can continue harassment until mutalisks come out. If you keep it around, it does some nice dps, and it can delay a 3rd for a little bit. Banshee comes in, and Destiny only has one queen, with no creep spread between the main and nat. ZvT builds typically involve hatch-first with 2 early queens. You get enough energy to drop one creep tumor before you need to spend the rest of the energy for larva injects. That one creep tumor will make its way from the main, connect the natural, and then make its way out or, more usefully, connect creep towards a potential 3rd. For a map like tald'arim, you can get a nice creep spread to the 3rd by the time you want to take it, making it safer against harass. That main-to-nat creep connection is specifically for queens to defend against drops and banshees. Queens are actually very good AA units. Banshee harass and drop harass can be very deadly and difficult to deal with without this creep spread. Destiny had only one queen at his main, and no creep spread. That banshee harass turned from what typically is just minor, but steady harass, into something more significant. Along with all the drones lost to the hellions, the damage done by the banshee was devastating. By this time, it was Major's game to lose. So long as he didn't make any critical mistake, or get massively outplayed in some way, he was going to win the game. Major's push was just him playing as he is supposed to. If it got defended, he would have several more shots left available.
excellent post.
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On August 26 2011 07:05 Tsuki.eu wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2011 13:04 Frozenserpent wrote:On August 25 2011 12:03 BlueHydra wrote:On August 25 2011 12:02 Ghoststrikes wrote:I didn't see game 1, but + Show Spoiler +Major totally outclassed destiny in games 2-4 Outclass? he just did early game pushes that every zerg has trouble with. It's true that terran early game all-in pushes can be very hard to deal with, but that wasn't the case here. These pushes were simply not all-in whatsoever. If destiny had a good defense, major simply would have slowly retreated back, and have a good economy behind it. Let's look at the games. In those games, he typically got his 3rd up and running while he pushed out. Major gets his 3rd up and running before Destiny gets a secure 3rd. Suppose Destiny destroys the push, but trades resources at a 4:5 ratio. IE Destiny loses 4000 resources worth of units for every 5000 major loses in his push. What would the situation be then? Destiny would actually still be drastically behind. Major had 74 workers at the end of the last game. 74 is pretty much the most amount of workers you would ever want at once, especially as terran. Meanwhile, Destiny had far, far less workers. Those pushes were very regular pressure pushes in a typical TvZ build. They are fundamental to playing TvZ in a heavy macro style. But, in those games, they ended the game. It's not because Destiny is so bad he can't handle regular pressure builds. It's because Destiny was already far, far behind by the time the pushes came out. Destiny would need to crush that push in order to have a good chance to win the game. So let's examine what happened earlier in the games, that caused Major to be at such an overwhelming advantage. Specifically, let's look at the last build that Major does, which I am quite familiar with on both sides of the coin. Major opens with a hellion expand, which is a very good opening. In fact it's one of my favorite TvZ openings. You see, there are many different kinds of hellion openings for T. We've seen the Slayers terrans favor blue flame hellion openings with drop. There are bfh hellion openings with a heavy count of bfh. These builds typically try to inflict massive amounts of drone damage. At the very least, they need to inflict a decent amount of economic damage or force a large enough response to make the opening worth it. The reactor hellion opening, however, is a different breed. What typically happens is you build 2-6 hellions, which you will send out, and while they are out, you are getting your 2nd up and running. The CC is actually rather fast. An important trait about this build is that there isn't a heavy commitment that must be paid for with drone blood. So you build 4-6 hellions. Even if you just snipe a single drone, you are really in a good position. You are not behind if you fail to do economic damage, provided that you do not lose those hellions for free. Those 4-6 hellions are the price for map control. You will restrict creep spread past their nat. You will prevent their lings from having free reign over the map. You will force some kind of response, whether it is a spine crawler or more lings. In fact, without the spine crawler, you can probably pick off a few lings for free. Any economic damage you inflict is merely extra. The important point is to not commit your hellions unless you think you have a good chance of inflicting damage. And that was the position Major found himself in game 4. One big mistake Destiny was timing. He did build a spine crawler, but he didn't have a 2nd queen out, and in addition, the spine crawler was a few seconds too slow. Furthermore, he had a rather low initial ling count. A great way to deal with a reactor hellion is to have a one spinecrawler up, and a handful of speedlings and a queen along with it. Destiny only had 1 queen, and it was at his main. His lings, which, iirc, was something like 2 pairs, isn't enough to stop a hellion runby. A ling/spinecrawler defense against hellion runbies works by zoning them out. They can't attempt a runby because it becomes incredibly risky. Just a handful of lings will trap the hellions, impeding their movements. Just a couple seconds of delaying the hellions will do enough damage to the runby hellions to render them very manageable and simple to deal with. Roaches were used by Destiny in previous games, and may seem like an obvious solution, but roaches aren't the ideal counter, and, in fact, I think they're quite a poor counter. If you make 2 roaches to fend off 4 hellions, you're investing 200 minerals in a roach warren, AND 200 resources of roaches, which is equivalent to the 400 resources sunk in hellions, but you don't get any map control with those roaches, and hellions add more to terran midgame than zerg adds to zerg midgame. Another aspect to keep in mind is that to get the 2 roaches out for the hellion timing, you have to have the roach warren building rather early. At that stage of zerg's economy, the bottleneck for drone production is minerals. In fact, many zergs get an early creep tumor around that time because they have excess larva if they have 2 queens and 2 hatches. Wait just a bit longer, and it isn't so bad to throw down a last minute spine crawler. Destiny, you see, doesn't have a "standard" ZvT opener. The standard openers involve a fast zergling speed upgrade. This makes it much easier to deal with hellion and marine pressure. This also gives zerg an advantage in map control. This is because Destiny doesn't have a standard style of ZvT. As we all know, he likes heavy infestor play. He wants to get to the infestor phase as soon as possible, and it is there that he can be comfortable enough to get his 3rd, harass, inflict damage, defend, tech, and get set up for the fast broodlord/infestor push. You notice, in the games before the last game, Destiny delayed his zergling speed upgrade. There are a few very good reasons why standard ZvT involves a rather fast speed upgrade. For one, marine stutter step micro makes marines very efficient against slow zerglings. With speed upgrade, marines don't become super efficient against zerglings again until the unit counts gets bigger or until stim is available. Heavy marine pressure has very little risk for the terran player if the zerg has no speed upgrade. The zerg can't punish the terran for poking in with the marines, and the terran can poke in and get free units this way, unless zerg invests in a couple spines. And there are other good reasons for faster ling speed, such as reapers and hellions. Naturally, Major, who's regularly employed reaper and hellion openings in the past, sought fit to punish Destiny for this hole in his early game. The hellions and the reapers are not unusual builds. They would do quite fine against a standard ZvT build, even when the zerg player is fully prepared. If zerg gets late speed, however, they suddenly become very, very deadly. This explains a lot of why Destiny lost games 2 and 3. And the thing that absolutely convinced Destiny that he had to change his opening build game 4, was that Major didn't need to sacrifice anything significant for that capability. He was playing a TvZ build that is very solid and will match up just fine against a solid ZvT build. So Destiny had to adjust game 4 and get his speed upgrade earlier. However, his timings for the lings was a bit off and he took a lot of damage, putting him at a disadvantage. Major followed up his highly successful hellion harass with single banshee harass. This follow up is fairly popular and is rather macro oriented. The idea is that there is no tech cost for the banshee; everything necessary for banshee production is already there. The tech lab is going to be used for stim. The starport is going to be used for medivac production. But if you use the starport and the techlab for a short period, you only need to spend 150/100 for a banshee. This is 250 units of resources. A standard TvZ build doesn't need a heavy gas count at this period, so the gas cost isn't significant. The banshee goes out and can guarantee a couple of drone kills without dying. It is just a very minor harass, typically. The idea is that scv production is limited compared to zerg drone production. Shaving a couple drones here and there will add up, keeping the terran at an ok position against the zerg. Shave a bit more than needed with some good maneuvering and tactics, and then you're looking at a slight economic advantage against zerg. Furthermore, the single banshee isn't bad later on. It can continue harassment until mutalisks come out. If you keep it around, it does some nice dps, and it can delay a 3rd for a little bit. Banshee comes in, and Destiny only has one queen, with no creep spread between the main and nat. ZvT builds typically involve hatch-first with 2 early queens. You get enough energy to drop one creep tumor before you need to spend the rest of the energy for larva injects. That one creep tumor will make its way from the main, connect the natural, and then make its way out or, more usefully, connect creep towards a potential 3rd. For a map like tald'arim, you can get a nice creep spread to the 3rd by the time you want to take it, making it safer against harass. That main-to-nat creep connection is specifically for queens to defend against drops and banshees. Queens are actually very good AA units. Banshee harass and drop harass can be very deadly and difficult to deal with without this creep spread. Destiny had only one queen at his main, and no creep spread. That banshee harass turned from what typically is just minor, but steady harass, into something more significant. Along with all the drones lost to the hellions, the damage done by the banshee was devastating. By this time, it was Major's game to lose. So long as he didn't make any critical mistake, or get massively outplayed in some way, he was going to win the game. Major's push was just him playing as he is supposed to. If it got defended, he would have several more shots left available. excellent post. excellent post, but too long to read sorry
User was warned for this post
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On August 24 2011 03:02 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2011 02:54 Bagi wrote: Major is probably the best NA terran with Select, and he should know Destinys style pretty well by now.
Major to win 3-1. Major is the best NA player. His macro and multittasking is not seen better by any other foreigner.
incorrect.
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