in, ill take marux4

Feels good to be back. It's been a few seasons.

eta: forgot to add, he accused me of maphacking??? lol he did like 2 base blink stalker, and I didn't pull off any crazy scouts during the game, I have no idea what could possibly give him that impression. I picked off like two proxy pylons, one of which was in watchtower range. People are mad I guess.

He also did a really cute pylon block at my natural (like, he built it when I was on 13 supply and let it finish before I was even close to putting a hatch down), but it was close enough to the mineral line that I just said **** it and built my hatch two hexes off and sent a few extra workers there. I have no idea how the tradeoff works between getting hatch down earlier vs having to saturate with more workers to get same mining efficiency, but my economy seemed fine in the game. I'd probably do it again.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

So, yeah, about the above post:

maphacks are workin out

confirmed elite

Grats goofy

We need to organize a 2p2 Starstrikers/Push Football/Star Dodgeball/Other good Arcade maps tournament

randomly today my ad block seems to have stopped working on twitch, same for ABP, anyone else having this?

Oh god i'd be so in for this. Even tho I've never played any of those.

Battlecraft/zone control plz. Starbow?

Saw this on TL - spreadsheet showing league distribution on NA every 10 minutes since 2.1 patch

As of right now, apparently it's...

GM: 0.24%
Master: 1.7%
Diamond: 5.37%
Plat: 6.68%
Gold: 17.82%
Silver: 28.97%
Bronze: 39.22%

So I'm in the top 7% of NA players?? Get the **** out. I'm ****ing terrible at this game. **** you giving me this responsibility Blizzard this is ****ing bull****.



Holy mother of ****

goofyballer WCS 2014 grand final champion incoming

well they know you play zerg so at any one time you cant be below top 10%

in other news, schu is possibly top 3 silver in a real ladder??

Did you go from Gold to Diamond in 2 games?

Gratz as well Goofy That string of posts was awesome to read. I actually really like those sequence pics of a play by play.

I dunno if anyone remembers me posting that I'm a noob kinda. But I've been having a lot higher apm as zerg and enjoying it a lot more (60~apm). Is there a good wiki for what units counter what? Like what do infestors counter? Cause I don't really get what to use vs certain units. Sorry I don't want to derail it so if someone wants to post once in here or pm that'd be awesome! Thanks in advance guise

An infestor walks into a bar, there is no counter.

/WoL

Somewhere like liquipedia has guides to all the units http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Main_Page

At your level you should focus on macro and basic mechanics.

What this means is you need to focus on spending your money and producing stuff. If your money never floats about a few hundred minerals or gas once you set up your economy as zerg, consistently inject and use the larva that is sitting there, don't get supply blocked etc, you will improve rapidly.

but in general

for your purposes, terran really only has three unit comps. if they're going marine/medivac/marauder/mine, you want muta/ling/baneling into ultralisk. if they're going mech, you probably want roaches (and eventually swarm hosts). if they're going that weird raven/planetary fortress army, just quit when you see it because you're going to either lose or play a 50 minute tilt game.

vs protoss, it's easy. if you see them open robo, go muta. if you see them open stargate, go ling/hydra or swarm hosts. if they open twilight, go roach.

against zerg, just make whatever- no one knows what's going on in that matchup anyway.

Axiom team house Starbow tournament, casted by Crank and Olivia: http://www.twitch.tv/crank

Three. Win vs gold = get plat, lose vs diamond my first game in plat, then win vs plat = get diamond.



wat.




killer_kill, congrats on making the right choice and realizing that Zerg is the best race; this makes you a very smart man. In addition to what bsball said above:

Mech can be kinda weird to deal with depending on what type of composition they go for; they can be tank-heavy, they can be thor-heavy, they may or may not have vikings/banshees (now that mech upgrades also apply to air units I think it's more common to include air). Roaches are good vs thors (although the tide of that matchup can turn once the thors have 3/3 cause holy **** do they kill things fast), godlike vs hellions and hellbats, but walking into sieged up tanks with them is suicidal. It takes awhile to get a big overwhelming mech army, so once you identify mech (with overlord scouting, look to see whether they start putting down raxes + e-bays or factories + armories after their expand), it's generally a good response to start making a ****load of roaches to try to pressure them and keep them from taking a third or moving out. Depending on how fast your lair is, there may also be timings you can hit with mutas before they have thors out to do some damage, but once they have thors + turrets up mutas are gonna be pretty useless.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that the terran will often switch up their composition to deal with what you're building. Heavy roach or swarm host = they will build lots of tanks; heavy mutas = they will build lots of thors. This can give you opportunities for tech switches - I had a game yesterday where my opponent started out fairly balanced in tanks/thors, but after an initial round of mutas got cleaned up I went 100% roaches, and after I killed off his thors he didn't build any more. Later in the game, after I built up a bank, I remaxed after a fight on 20 mutas and that ended the game.

Against someone including vikings/banshees, you need infestors. Mutas trade really well against vikings because of the splash damage, but with thors underneath the vikings mutas will get devastated. So, fungaling clumped up air units is your best defense against them, with some corruptors to finish them off (corruptors have way better armor + hp than mutas so they won't just evaporate over the thors).

If you get into the late game with a solid bank (which you generally should - while Terran is turtling and trying to build up their mech deathball, they have a very immobile army and until ~150 supply a vulnerable one as well. So, you respond by taking lots of bases and teching up - get some spines down to stop hellion runbys, but that's basically the only thing you have to worry about early on), and the Terran isn't going vikings, you can consider a brood lord switch. It's difficult to keep them alive for a long time (pros are good at this, I am not) because obviously the T will start cranking out vikings to take them down, but if you can surprise them with like 8 broods when they don't have anything ready to stop them, you can a-move over their bases and do so much damage before they die that the game is effectively over. Thors are really bad at killing broods as long as you focus them down and don't get clumped up.

Swarm hosts are definitely good against mech but I haven't personally figured out the sweet spot for how to use them most effectively yet. Depending on the map, the mech army may be able to just avoid them (and it's super easy for you to get caught out of position and just straight up lose a base), and once they get a lot of tanks their army will be pretty good at shutting down the locusts and your swarm hosts won't really be doing much damage, and will only be good for controlling position (since he can't just ignore you, he'll still have to set up defensively to stop the SHs).

On the subject of playing vs mech, here is an amazing game you should watch:



Man, he's good.



I think vs Protoss is where your unit compositions are the most sensitive to even small differences in the Protoss army. Things to keep in mind:
- Hydras are good vs skytoss, but only if you have a somewhat overwhelming number of them. In small numbers, phoenixes can pick up hydras and snipe them really fast (cause they do bonus vs light, and hydras are light and have **** for hp), and voids will just eat them up. So, make sure you have a solid economy before going into full hydra production. I've had way too many engagements with hydras vs voids where I thought I was gonna be in good shape and I somehow got crushed. Basically, hydras have really good dps and they die really fast - so, if you don't have enough damage-tanking capability to survive while you deal out that damage, hydras will just die before they kill off an army. Also, hydras are ****ing terrible vs storm (because of fragility) so once templars are out you should probably just stop building them. They're also pretty bad vs most compositions that have colossi because of the splash damage.
- One thing that's good to know for ZvP is when ultralisks are good and when they're bad. They can be a game-changing unit if built in the right situation. They are really good vs: zealots, templar, phoenix. Pretty good vs: colossi (they tank the damage really well and once they close in the colossi are toast), tempest (do damage too slow vs ultras). Decent vs stalkers (mass blink stalker will do ok vs stalkers, a smallish number of stalkers as part of a normal gateway army will get crushed though), bad vs void rays (against small numbers of voids the ultra can basically ignore them if the rest of the composition is favorable, but against lots of charged up voids the ultras will melt pretty fast), and the hard counter to ultras is immortals.
- As bsball said, mutas are good vs robo compositions because the only unit P will have that can even shoot them is stalkers (sentries don't count, they're pea-shooters). The trouble with opening spire against robo is that two-base robo all-ins can hit before you have mutas out, and then you're in trouble. I'm probably just bad at using mutas vs P cause I'm not really sure when the right time to use them is. It's worth keeping in mind, though, that in late-game high-bank situations a remax on mutas from another composition can be devastating and end the game when your opponent doesn't have muta-killing units (aka phoenix, archon, storm, mass blink stalker). Against stargate play, mutas are awful vs phoenix (unless you can fungal the phoenixes, harder than it sounds) but pretty good vs void rays if the numbers are in your favor. The trouble with going muta against stargate, though, is that once the P sees mutas he will instantly start producing phoenixes (usually on multiple stargates) and then your mutas have a limited window of effectiveness before the phoenixes basically make them useless.
- Swarm hosts are excellent against compositions without AoE. Without storm or colossi, any army walking into locusts is going to get ****ing owned.


And of course, if you have specific questions we can always help. The liquipedia pages (ex: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Corruptor) have lots of information too and can be helpful to read until you memorize all the details of each unit. For example, it's good to know that corruptors do bonus damage vs massive air, so that in the rare instances when you see tempests or BCs you instinctively know that corruptors will be good against them. Some of the "strong against/weak against" units they list are whack - it says ultralisks are "strong against" marauders when that's exactly the unit T will make to try to counter them - but most of the stuff is good.

vT banelings and mutas in absurd amounts -- unstoppable/free wins

vP bsball covered excellently

vZ just make what he makes, boom, gto

i would say that ultras are really good vs colossi too

colossi based armies are always balled up

Whoa sweet guys, I'm def going to let that sink in and put it into practice. I'll let you guys know after a couple days of practicing more. I recently started playing hearthstone so my time is split lol.

I find myself having a large bank of minerals with around like 700~ gas once I'm rolling. Am I overdroning or should I maybe add zerglings/mineral heavy units or add a base or two?

Add macro hatches and don't let larva sit idle for too long, keep up with injects. You shouldn't be banking until hive tech basically, except when you are saving for a muta swell or whatever.

Depends on the matchup. ZvP add hatches so you can increase production and spend dat bank, ZvT just hold down the 't' button and that should solve your gas overload pretty quick.

Having mineral banks is pretty normal for me (I'm bad though, if you watch pros they somehow find a way to spend everything), having gas banks is a bit abnormal before you're maxed since everything Zerg does is based on gas. If you find yourself unable to spend everything you can also tech up instead (get upgrades, faster infestation pit into pathogen glands/locust upgrade/hive, stuff like that).

I think it usually happens w/o me noticing when I have around 4~ bases or so. I need to keep up more on injects def. How many queens should I have? I usually have 1 for the first two bases, get a 2nd when just around getting 3rd maybe a bit before and sometimes get a 3rd for inject/spread.

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