|
Hello, well, today I finally got rank 1 gold division 8 on the EU server. I know brag posts are generally frowned upon here on TL, and even moreso those which have to do with SC2.
It's been a looong tiring road, but I finally got to where I wanted. To commemorate this, I'd like to share my replays and talk a little about my SC2 experience.
First before we get too far into this I wanted to clarify a few things:
I largely lacked the skill and APM to play StarCraft: Brood War. It also didn't help that I couldn't use hotkeys in Starcraft 1. I played Terran in BW for about 10 years off and on, while in the last 2, I jumped on Iccup and chose Zerg. I made it to D+ twice. I'm ashamed of myself, but skillwise, I'm much better at WarCraft III than I ever was at StarCraft =( since, it isn't as much APM intensive and has more advanced UI.
I feel like my overall knowledge of Stacraft after playing it for so long, and watching professional games and casts here on TL coupled with my hotkey usage (like tabbing through unit subgroups) and generally being used to an improved UI from WarCraft III gave me a big helping hand in starting to play StarCraft 2.
Well, certainly most of you are probably thinking: " Just post those damn reps already, and I'll be on my way"
So not to disappoint those people here they are: http://www.mediafire.com/?e3mtmmozz0o
What you will find in the rep pack:
[*]Me being BM
[*]Me being owned
[*]Me showing people how to put on a ZvP clinic in the Gold divisions and quite often in platinum using mostly lings/banes and only sometimes hydra/roach.
[*]Some interesting strats from my enemies.
[*]Nail bitingly close games.
How did I start out: Well, after the reset I started out as Protoss. Overall I was doing fine in the lower gold ranks doing the same 4 warpgate rush every game. But alas, Terrans were the bane of my existence. While I was holding my own in PvZ and PvP, I was winning only 10%-20% of my games vs Ts. I was really frustrated and fed-up with Protoss at that point. Enter Nony. He released a reppack that showed how to play PvT with phoenixes (this was before they could do sliding shot). It was a fine tactic, that earned me a few good wins, but I felt that I couldn’t go further with Protoss anymore. They were far too frustrating to play. Building immortals every game, sentries blocking ramps, getting owned by mass marauder, enough was enough! I admit, Protoss requires micro skills far beyond what I currently possess.
Now by this point from the top of the ladder, at the start of the season I dropped to the abysmal 39th place in my division. So, I decided to try Zerg. At frist I was really afraid, being in Gold, and trying out a new race. This is the time first time I wanted some kind of “practice league” to ease my way into the new race. My first game was a ZvT on Blistering Sands. I was so stressed and confused I had absolutely no idea what the hell I was doing in that game. My hands were shaking, as I frantically tried to hit the right shortcut to make the specific unit I wanted. Fortunately, the Terran was very friendly and also not very skilled  .
In a flash the game was over. I busted his backdoor rocks with lings and poured into his base a healthy amount of speedlings and banes that quickly took out his workers and what small force of marauders and marines he managed to muster in that short amount of time. My initiation into the swarm was complete. I took down my most hated enemy which is a Terran. As my lings cheerfully humped what remained of his once proud base I smiled to myself, no longer stressed or shaking. I knew I was going to have a lot of fun with this race. We both GGed, and well, we became friends over Bnet, occasionally playing together every now and then .
Over the games that I played as Zerg I learnt quite a few things like Terrans are still a bitch to play against, with their thorship harass and that ZvZs are wild.
Now for a few map descriptions:
Incineration Zone: IMBA IMBA IMBA thumb this shit down.
LT and Metapolis: Probably my favourite maps. 1 way into the base, many expos around and generally favour macro games. I know a lot of players share my feelings here.
Desert Oasis and Blistering Sands: Fun maps for Zerg players overall, but IMO unbalanced in certain MUs. I know for a fact that Blistering is a nightmare for T/P with that backdoor when facing a Zerg and DO is a nightmare in ZvT with thorship.
Kulas Rivine: Well, statistically, this is the map I won most on (it says it’s my best map in my profile) so, I guess I like it somehow? 
Steppes of War: Fun map, but the rush distances are deceiving. When a P does 2 proxy gates near his nat ramp, you know you’re in deep shit as Z going 14 hatch 13 pool.
Now a little battle report of my last game:
Steppes of War. I spawned as red Zerg at the top, and my blue Protoss opponent at the bottom. Went for my standard build 9 overlord, 13 pool and 13 hatch seeing that he did a nice wall with a pylon and a gateway up on his ramp. I sent my initial 6 lings to his base, and managed to surround the first Zealot as it was positioned badly. Killing a zealot without losing any of the lings further boosted my confidence in this game, but I decided against pressing my advantage when a new zealot poped up and was quickly assisted by 6-7 probes. We both pumped a bit, but I decided to end it quickly, seeing as he only had 1 gateway and was very low on units.
I made what I liked the most: speedlings and banelings! With the intent of busting him.
I moved in for the kill. Lings and banes rolling up his ramp, but what’s this?! A forcefield?! Niiiiice, so this one knew how to play, and actually had a half-decent reaction time.
Startled and uneasy after my discovery, I backed off. This wasn’t going to be such an easy win, as I’m accustomed to in the Gold league, but I wasn’t about to let go of my points, because being tied at 1409 rating with another chump for 1st place in my division wasn’t going to cut it for me.
I backed off, seeing as he had a solid defense, and decided to whore drones to bolster my weak economy after the unsuccessful baneling bust. By this time, I had Lair, and was expecting some kind of an Immortal push, or a void rush. Throwing down my hydralisk den, I upgraded overlord speed, and immediately made an overseer to not get killed by any stupid DTs.
As time passed, I poked and prodded his defense, getting to see colossi and an expansion.
I knew, this was going to be a long hard game. Instinctively, after seeing his nat go up, I destroyed the rocks on the right side of my nat, and made a 3rd.
As both our econs boomed, we added in huge amounts of units, me opting for giving up map control and rather starting to really saturate my mineral lines. He expanded to his left behind the rocks, and we were on even bases. I morphed what little lings remained into banelings, hoping to annihilate a zealot wall when we would eventually clash.
I opted for mass roach/hydra with double evos with the initial support of corruptors.
When I tried to probe him a little I saw the horror: A solid line of colossi/sentries/zealots/stalkers in front of me.
Clearly, he wanted to keep me contained and starve me to death. I moved out a little, and well, the colossi did their thing. I retreaded home to lick my wounds and opted for adding infestors into my army composition too.
Finally, when I was at 199/200, I did what little I could: I checked my upgrades, spawned more larvae on my 3 hatches and rolled out! Since my army couldn’t grow any larger I decided to attack head on. 3 groups of fully upgraded roaches in the front, supported by 1,5 or 2 groups of hydras, about 5 corruptors and 6-7 infestors.
I unleashed the full fury of the swarm on the unsuspecting Protoss forces. The battle was over in a flash. 3 colossi were standing amongst a small army of … + Show Spoiler + ZERG ROACHES AND HYDRAS, FUCK YEAH
Continued here:
+ Show Spoiler + What was left of my initial force, I send to his nat and main. The swarm roared with joy and excitement as it descended upon the halpless protoss bases, and what forces the protoss commander managed to summon from Shakuras.
As the roaches overwhelmed the zealots, the hydras went in for colossus hunting. I knew nothing could be done now, the swarm tasted protoss flesh. They were in a bloodlust, in a frenzy. They were, at that time, IMMORTAL.
Newly spawned roaches eager to taste the flesh of their accursed enemies, went hunting into the nearby expansions. Cannons, stalkers and probes were devoured without prejudice. As my units tasted raw meat after a long hard battle, I tasted the sweet sweet taste of victory after a grueling 33 minute game, and ultimately of the 1st rank.
Well, I hope you liked it. I certainly had fun writing it all, and even more fun playing it all out . See you all around on B.net!
![[image loading]](http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/5056/n1gold.jpg)
 
|
congratulations sir =)
I dont even get how people get to #1 in gold, I recently was climbing up gold and when I hit rank 7 I got promoted to platinum, never got to be #1 T_T
We should play some more when you're online, so I can practise vs those damn banelings
edit: damnit, every sentence ended with a smiley - does that make me gay or something?
|
fake screenshot
no way u are rank 1 gold
|
On May 11 2010 06:22 7mk wrote:congratulations sir =) I dont even get how people get to #1 in gold, I recently was climbing up gold and when I hit rank 7 I got promoted to platinum, never got to be #1 T_T We should play some more when you're online, so I can practise vs those damn banelings edit: damnit, every sentence ended with a smiley - does that make me gay or something?
Sure, it would be great to play you!
And I wish I was promoted to plat  . I really feel like my Z is a notch up over my T/P. Overall, in this season I probably hit 1st gold division 8 for the 4th time now. Basically the top 5 of us in my division, we trade ranks every hour or so, but by far the best part is going to sleep with rank 5, and later on getting on and being rank 3 xD. I haven't seen many people from my division get promoted, only 1 person (DrSheldon or something like that). Maybe my division is just the weakest?=(
On May 11 2010 06:22 petzergling wrote:
fake screenshot
no way u are rank 1 gold
why?
|
Haha this is fun to read, as I just started the beta recently to. I just got in gold and i'm losing to terrans as well...
Hopefully I won't give up and switch races but congratz on your achievement!
|
wow fun read. congratz on your winz
|
Congratulations. Are you planning on giving Terran a go as well or are you pretty much set on zerg? I'm also curious about what you think about SC2 in general. I've only played a few games myself so my experience is limited.
|
On May 11 2010 08:50 stenole wrote:
Congratulations. Are you planning on giving Terran a go as well or are you pretty much set on zerg? I'm also curious about what you think about SC2 in general. I've only played a few games myself so my experience is limited.
Thanks! I did play terran before they wiped the accounts, and I really liked them, it's just that this season I wanted to try out the zerg. In the near future I'm willing to give them another go, especially since hunter seeker missile was moved down the tech tree from the fusion core to the tech lab. Terran is a very fun micro intensive race that also needs a fair bit of preplanned strategy. Switching addons is vital to a good terran's success as it permits you to cut corners in builds and timings and pump out the desired unit out faster. Macro is fun, and the units overall are strong.
As far as SC2 in general goes: Well, right now, I feel like the micro/macro aspects of the game are very similar to WarCraft III. The maps are small, they usually have a backdoor, somehow the units are bigger, and gold minerals and Xel'Naga watchtower play a very important role in the game. Simply put, the game encourages frequent skirmishes, which is different from the general feel of StarCraft as we know it today with FEs and generally macro oriented korean styles. MBS really helps people like me to macro effectively throughout the game. Smartcasting and auto-mine well, they were in Armies of Exigo, and I consider the game mostly balanced, so I'm used to them and also quite happy they are put in. Seeing what you hotkey'ed at the bottom of the UI is a veeeery nice touch also =D! The worker idle button is also useful.
Macro mechanics fit in nicely with the races, and feel almost natural after 3-5 games. The game has 1 flaw IMO: It's waaaaay too gas intensive. Gas units are so much stronger than non-gas units that there's almost no point in making rines/lings/zealots. Gas is absolutely vital in this game. No gas mining, even in early game spells almost certain death in most cases.
If you've played Armies of Exigo or Warcraft III microing units shouldn't be foreign to you, in a sense of flanking, retreating wounded units or casting special abilities.
The balance: Well, this part is very hard to describe. Overall I think the centerpieces of each races' army in every matchups are the Roach, the Immortal and the Marauder. They all fill in the same roles: tank, early damage dealer. I hesitate to call this balance, but all of these 3 units share a synergy with each other. It's as if the 3 of them are locked in some kind of headlock triangle of balance. If 1 would disappear, surely their respective race would be the weakest.
Marines and Zealots in later game get hard countered by other units, which makes them a little less viable then they were in BroodWar, but still, if you have spare minerals, they deal damage.
Zerglings on the other hand are a kind of enigma. You can mass more of them, and now they
have a very useful early/mid game evolution that dominates the battlefield, but in later game they are little more than meat shields, even when fully upgraded with adrenal glands. They melt to ravens, to a mnm ball, to tanks, to colossi, to storm, to infestors, to banes. Lategame it's always better to go roaches. Always.
I feel like Terrans are the most balanced raced. Almost every unit they have is useful in 1 way or another. They have great synergy between units. Their air now is very strong. The starport is now a very crucial building in almost every matchup. Factory units are still strong but IMO need the support of either starport or barracks units to really shine. The power of terran is a good unit mix that can take on almost anything you throw at them.
Units that I feel are overpowered: Broodlords. Even though they are T3, they are mind bogglingly strong units. They have waaay too much hp and if their ability to shoot broodlings has to stay, reduce the rate of fire.
Marauders: although I understand how crucial their role in a terran army is, I just cannot understand why they have such a powerful ability as concussive shells without a cooldown. Basically they are like Dryads in Warcraft III except they do ridiculous amounts of damage and have decent HP. Try Crypt Fiends or Hive Spitters with slow O.o.
Protoss get nerfed every patch, so I won't hate on them. They are very powerful on the offence and warpgates are really the most important tech they have. DTs are still worth making, but HTs not so much, unless the enemy has a ridiculous amount of infestors/vikings. Colossi and sentires are very fun new units that are worth making in almost any situation, both very micro intensive. Archons are crap, better to send HTs back to base to regen energy -_-;. VRs are good but expensive, phoenixes are funny now, that they have the sliding shot. They can be used in fun strategies which have to do with lifting crucial units like sieges or queens.
The problem is Zerg units are so bland, and there is absolutely no point in teching to Tier 3 now, aside from a greater spire, tier 3 evo chamber upgrades and the roach organic carapace. Zerg have 9 units while Toss and Terrans have about 12. Although blizzard managed to preserve the "Sauron Zerg" swarm feel of the race, I feel like they are still missing something crucial in the zerg arsenal.
edit: I just wanted to add: Terrans require solid strategy planning and sound mechanics to play. I don't mean solid mechanics in terms of StarCraft 1, but in terms of Starcraft 2. Macro is very important, usually a Terran has to put up more buildings than P/Z to get a good unit mix onto the field, so frequent hotkey visits to your raxes factories and starports will be necessary to keep up in the game. A good understanding of the situation you are in, coupled with the knowledge of units and map is crucial too. You need to decide to make banshees vikings or medivacs on the go. You need to correctly assess the situation you are in, and respond appropriately. Execution is key.
Overall the feel of the game is good. The balance could use some work. IMO Armies of Exigo is much better balanced than StarCraft 2. If Blizzard continues to patch this game, there is hope.
|
Thanks for the writeup. I was expecting a one line answer, but appreciate the overview. Hopefully the finished, post-patched release of SC2 will be fun and interesting over time.
I was going to make an attempt at wording the things I feel are not that great about the game (at the moment), but it's hard to keep it short and to the point. I mostly object to the game dynamics that encourage players to mass units, that hamper creative play and that encourage the player to take blind gambles.
|
Well, to be fair, massing units is a part of every RTS. It's just that now, the holy trinity of the roach/marauder/immortal is just so dominating over the other units, that when your opponent is massing 1 of the holy 3, you can't do much else, but to mass your equivalent of them. But I agree that this game needs more variety in the units that are used.
People tend to do over and over what works for them. They know the roach and marauder are solid units, much better than the T1.5 and T1 equivalents and incorporate them into specific builds. That's what most RTSes are about, but again, I see your point that there is little to no flexibility in builds, and if there is some, it's something very minor.
Creativity is a huge issue. The hole trinity just works vs just about anything you throw at them. Even if you catch your opponent off guard, he'll probably just counter with his army of roaches or marauders and wipe your base. They are too cost effective to not make them now.
Blind Gambles? I assume you mean just blindly doing 1 build over and over? Well, I dunno if you played WC3, but in the early years Night Elves always did 1 and the same build: Dryads and Bears every single game, even without scouting. The problem with this is that if a race is built solely around 1-2 core units, you can't nerf them, or the whole race becomes unplayable. Which is a design flaw, not the player's fault.
|
By massing units I mean reluctance to tech and expo, really. Essentially the only defender's advantage is the distance between your bases until you have enough units to cause congestion and to exploit the concave arc effect. This gives you only a sliver of room to do things that don't pay off relatively soon. And this works both ways. There is a pressure to always have enough units ready to defend and be ready to challenge if your opponent is greedy. In PvP you potentially have the smallest room for future investment because base distance is reduced to 0 both ways because of warp gates. Weak static defense, lots of units able that bypass terrain as well as few units that perform better on the defense than offense further magnifies the problem.
Creativity is also constrained because of the small freedom you have to invest in things that don't immediately pay off. It also encourages you to invest in units that have a role in a large army vs large army engagement, because you always need to be ready to defend or take advantage of opponent greed.
I may be a little off target when I said blind gambles. There are really two ways to play RTSes. There is the "proper" way where you employ strategies that does okay against every possible move the opponent makes. The idea is that if you are the superior player, you will win regardless. But it becomes very hard to play this style successfully because of what I mentioned in the previous paragraphs. It does not help that a lot of the unit compositions in SC2 perform similar in competent hands as in progamer hands. I imagine it would be very hard to micro yourself back from an advantage. So what is the alternative: luck. You do something that is tactically unsound in the hopes that the opponent won't catch it. And once you start using this as your general strategy because strategy A inherently loses to strategy B you are no longer playing "properly". From there the step is small to picking strategies based on statistics. My opponent is likely to do B, so I will do A, not because A is good, but because it certainly defeats B. I guess my arguement comes down to early game choices that you are forced to make without being able to scout. These are so consequential that it is hard to come back even if you are the "better player". Ironically, when I thought about blind gambles in my last post, I was thinking about it costing too much to scan before you harass because the harassment won't pay for the scan, so you risk moving in and losing everything for uncertain gain. I'm also thinking about how a protoss can't probe a terran's defenses because a Marauder will slow the unit and then it will get killed. In short, scouting costs too much.
I've tried to be general here without becoming irrelevant. I realize that SC2 has things in it that directly counter what I said. Some of the things will only apply to some races. I might as well be posting this as a rant about Armies of Exigo, because I feel it relates as much to that.
|
On May 11 2010 23:17 stenole wrote:
By massing units I mean reluctance to tech and expo, really. Essentially the only defender's advantage is the distance between your bases until you have enough units to cause congestion and to exploit the concave arc effect. This gives you only a sliver of room to do things that don't pay off relatively soon. And this works both ways. There is a pressure to always have enough units ready to defend and be ready to challenge if your opponent is greedy. In PvP you potentially have the smallest room for future investment because base distance is reduced to 0 both ways because of warp gates. Weak static defense, lots of units able that bypass terrain as well as few units that perform better on the defense than offense further magnifies the problem.
I think it was Blizzard's design direction that made this the way it is. They wanted to encourage frequent skirmishes and fast action packed games. Also keep in mind, that to develop stable macro openings this game needs:
1) A stable build (version) in which almost nothing changes. A player needs to know how big is his window of opportunity. If a CC in this patch builds 80 seconds, and in the next 15 seconds less, that will affect builds.
2) Time. Although we've already been trying to make good stable macro builds, we need more time to find the finer aspects of the game.
I disagree that expanding and teching is limited. It's just that the game is new, so everyone plays intuitively with 1-2 bases max. Terrans have a FE vs Protoss, Protoss are already learning to expand when they see T/Z doing it also. Zergs have finally developed safe FEs akin to those in Brood War. We often see hydras, tanks, thors, colossi, void rays on the battlefield, and not just for harassment purposes, but incorporated into armies. Sure you can't cannon or sunken up and be happily on your way to Carriers or Broodlords. This is the design philosophy that Blizzard is pushing for.
Defender's advantage is smaller than it was in BW, but it's still there. Creep, tanks, planetary fortresses, forcefields, cliff walkers, cliff advantage are all there as much on the offence as on the defence. Mirror match ups, are of course a whole different story, but they were also a different story in BW. Protoss players relied on goon concaves and reavers. Tank lines were important too. 3 warpgates on a cliff can fend off 4-5 warpgate pressure until immortals or colossi arrive. Sure, you're gambling here, but so you were in BW going for reavers instead of more gates.
A P player doing FE in BW essentially gave up ALL map control to zerg for getting an economy early game. How is this any different from SC2 now? The only difference I see is macro mechanics being in Zs favour. The P in BW couldn't stop the 3rd from going up or even the 4th. He opted for massing a big strike force a few minutes later, and trying to punish the zerg before the expos would pay back for each other.
About creativity I won't argue. I just think cute and ballsy strats haven't been found and made popular yet.
Blind gambles: Of course, if everyone played a standard straight up game, the better player would win. That's what cheese, abuse and generally unorthodox play is for: to throw your opponent off his game and maybe do damage to even things up a little. I'm not going to argue with strat A beats B, but I'll just simply say that either you play like Boxer with infinite finesse and cute awe inspiring strategies that work 50% of the time, or you play like Flash and Jaedong, that do builds that maximize their chances to win. Scouting is a problem in SC2, I agree, currently only zerg can effectively scout with overseers or overlords with speed, without loosing too much economy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT![[image loading]](http://img688.imageshack.us/i/n1gold.jpg/)
