Wasnt there supposed to be a interview with mike morhaime at stage during this blizzcon? At what point in the schedule did this take place?

After game 3 and Soo's comeback, I thought he had the series won. Instead, he didn't win a game after that.

BUMP

also the huge balance patch came out today I think, patch notes are here

I remember reading something about you having to log in by a certain date to unlock specific features of this new "free" update. I can't find it now, though.

I only have the original SC2 so if I was to reinstall the game (haven't played in years because I was forever-newb) would I get access to all of the expansions?

Multiplayer: yes
Campaigns: I think if you owned WoL on your bnet account you'll get HotS campaign free, otherwise WoL is free for everyone

Anyone playing with the balance changes? Looking them over and seeing that ghosts start with cloak I'm just gonna assume that every TvX matchup centers around proxy ghost cheese until proven otherwise, and that mass blink stalker suddenly becomes popular again.

The removal of the mothership core should be good for my cheesy ZvP builds, but I'm not really sure how good the shield battery will be yet. I think we'll see a lot more mech in TvZ and TvT because of the changes to the raven, the cyclone buff, and the new transformation upgrade.

Yeah, I got an email from Blizzard to this effect but couldn't find the redeem button, not that I have too much interest in single player campaigns

Haven't actually watched the ASL finals, have a few flights/train journeys the next week where I need to pass the time, anyone watch that can say if it's worth the effort?

If you open up your Battle.net launcher (they call it an app), there is a little gift box toward the top right corner. Click on that and it'll show all of the offers you have and you can claim them from there.

I had a hearthstone pack in there waiting for me from a couple months ago when I installed the game and wondered why I didn't receive a pack for whatever the reward was for.

They're discussing initial balance changes in response to the big patch

Cliffs:
- infestor: nerf to fungal area of effect (which had been buffed in the patch), *can't fungal while burrowed* (ouch!!!!), reduced infested terran range
- oracle: 6 seconds longer to build, slight damage reduction vs light so marines/hydras can counter better
- shield battery: increase cost from 75 -> 100 minerals
- ghost: cost change from 200/100 -> 150/125
- terran miscellaneous factory tech lab upgrades are cheaper (drilling claws, rapid hellion transformation, faster cyclone lock-on firing)

One thing I didn't appreciate until playing in the new patch is how much better the disruptor is now that it hits on impact and not after a specified time period. It's way harder to micro against and way more of a loose cannon sort of thing (i.e. I could chase down a disruptor with a bunch of units with no fear if I knew the units could kill it before its nova would explode; now if I'm chasing a retreating disruptor it could wipe the **** out of them if it comes off cooldown, or do nothing and die if it doesn't)

Suggestions for a t0-2 strategy for zerg? Been on break since HotS. Videos super welcome. Mostly just learning the basic early games scouting decisions and practice macro/hotkeys. I'm currently using grid keys. Viable, or do I need to learn something faster? Never been better than a gold player, fwiw.

I've always used default-ish keys (some custom stuff for hotgroups so I can put them on extra mouse buttons/tilde), layout is up to you I guess.

My general strategies are...
ZvZ: cheese, I've never been good at this matchup

ZvT/ZvP: I play the beginning of these pretty much the same, which is 18 hatch 18 gas 18 pool and get ling speed, then overlord speed. After that:

- ZvT, my BO is then 20 overlord, stop making units, when hatch/pool finish then I'm making 2 queens and 6 lings. First overlord goes by their natural to make sure they expanded - proxy cheese is rare but if they're doing some **** your 6 lings are enough for defense before you get scouting info. If you don't see a natural, some Terrans will occasionally make their first CC in their base so it doesn't guarantee cheese but it does mean you should get on guard and try to get an overlord into their base quickly. Most important thing in a normal game is to then identify mech or bio (based on whether you see multiple factories or multiple barracks). Mech can be difficult to play against in long games but against gold players, if you just macro out a solid roach-hydra army and grab a few vipers for blinding clouds, you'll win. Bad mech players also tend to be turtly so I use that as an excuse to take a faster 4th (maybe even 5th) than I otherwise would so I can upgrade and max out as quickly as possible. Against bio, keep it simple - go ling/bane/muta, expand when they expand, make lots of units and get lots of upgrades and punish their bad splits and try not to lose all your banes to a widow mine and you'll be fine.

- ZvP, I actually drone scout in this matchup which I don't necessarily recommend since no pros ever do it, it's more to scout for early forge or 2 gate openers if they don't expand quickly. I drone longer before making units in this matchup since it's not like they ever send zealots into your base super early, if they're gonna invest in adepts I'll usually just put a spine in each mineral line and laugh as they micro poorly trying to kill workers when I have a 600 mineral bank anyway and can just replace them all instantly. Other than that you want to scout for what buildings they're making after their cyber core - stargate = probably oracles, get spores and you're fine and that also means they'll probably try to take a 3rd and won't all-in you. Robo = probably warp prism play as immortal-heavy all-ins aren't popular anymore; twilight = probably resonating glaves for adepts with an outside chance of zealot charge or DTs, either way you probably want to get a roach warren; gateways = probably a 2 base all in? but sometimes just clicking buttons. I almost always wind up playing roach-hydra in this matchup, adding some lurkers in the midgame, and as I'm close to maxing out I add a spire and ~5 corruptors because my favorite way to make Protoss players hate Starcraft is to shoot down all their observers and then just let invisible lurkers kill them. If you see a Protoss army marching on your creep and not shooting the tumors then you know this strategy will wreck them because they don't even have an observer with their army.

Hydra-bane has been popular for awhile in pro ZvP which I've always hated, ymmv if you want to try that.

Nice. I'll give it some tries in customs then report back after placements.

I'll add one other thing for ZvP to watch out for - sometimes you'll see Protoss turtle on 3 bases w/ lots of cannons and try to not die while building up a big group of carriers. If you don't spot this early-ish it can become too late, because hydras are dog**** against mass carrier and you really want to have upgraded corruptors. This strat also means you won't be getting attacked anytime soon so you should go up to 5-6 bases and get double spire for upgrades. Keep an eye out for multiple stargates when scouting, and if you see them definitely be on the alert for a fleet beacon to go down.

This isn't super common, but it's not super uncommon either and it's so annoying to lose to that I feel compelled to mention it. Mass oracle has been popular-ish in pro games but I don't see it often in gold-plat and you only lose to it if you get taken completely by surprise anyway.

What's the standard opener for Terran vs each of the 3 races?

As a Zerg player I can tell you TvZ, unfortunately don't know the other two:
- barracks
- gas (not sure what order, obviously you want 50 gas when the rax finishes)
- make 1 reaper for scouting, then reactor and factory
- expand on low ground
- swap factory onto reactor and make 4-6 hellions for scouting/harass/containing creep/forcing Zerg to make units

From there you have a lot of choices depending on the type of midgame you want to play and whether you want to do banshee/liberator harass or go into faster stim/pump out marines, etc (or start more factories for mech)

Been toying with playing again just for fun. I've been wanting to play a new race, other than Protoss, and I think I'm leaning toward Zerg.

What is the best way to handle Queens to cycle through them quickly? It probably isn't efficient to side scroll the map every time.
Also, what is the best way to produce drones? Is there a certain count? Since there is a big trade-off between drones and army, I'm curious how to handle that optimally. Sometimes, I'll just hold down the D and let it mass produce drones, but then I have no larvae left for army units until the next cycle.

I'm expecting to lose often, but my first placement match, my opponent was screwing around and built Command Centers over and over and surrounded them with turrets. He made 0 army units. I ended up massing mutas and just killing him off after 35 minutes. Was kind of annoying, but it gave me some practice too.

By cycling through queens, I assume you're talking about injecting? The way I do this is...
- all base queens on the same control group (for me, 5)
- other queens (for creep, defense, I usually get 2 extra) on a different control group
- there's a key (spacebar, I think? if that isn't the default figure out what this is) that cycles between hatcheries; I also bind F1-F4 camera locations to my first 4 bases
...so, when it's time to inject, I either do
F1 5 v *click hatch* F2 5 v *click hatch* F3 5 v *click hatch*
...or replace F1/F2/F3 with spacebar. You can also do 5 v and then click the hatchery on the minimap but that's for fancy people and I'm not fancy.

re: droning - yeah, that's kind of the central struggle with playing Zerg, when do you drone vs. when do you make workers. It's something you have to get a bit of a feel for, but as a general guideline...
- ZvT I make 6 lings when my pool finishes (at 20 supply) for general defense and as a guard against any mass reaper BS (not common anymore) they may be trying, but otherwise will drone hard until I put my 3rd base down and need to figure out if they're playing macro or if they're gonna do a fast stimmed marine drop (need queens/banes) or a fast hellbat/cyclone attack (need roaches)
- ZvP tends to be a little more macro-oriented early on, I might put down a later pool and drone harder and skip lings; if I suspect adept pressure I'll usually just put spines in my mineral lines because players at my level aren't good enough to micro well against that and literally the only danger early adepts pose is to workers. Other than that just scout their tech, know what they're doing, and react appropriately - lots of gates on 2 bases? Get units! Stargate into 3rd? Spore each base and make a million drones!
- ZvZ: I don't play this matchup and it's unfortunately the matchup where this issue (droning vs units) is the hardest. If you drone too hard while your opponent is massing lings you just die. I think the important thing is to have good overlord placement so you can see their units coming as soon as possible, know when they're taking a 3rd, know when they're teching. At lower levels squeezing out some defensive banelings will help you drone more safely too (since players will be bad at microing lings vs banes).

At the level I've been playing, I haven't seen too many advanced concepts. People trying all sorts of crazy things. ZvP and the guy is trying to hide expansions all over the map instead of staying contained and defensive. Then, he shows up with Collosi and Battle Cruisers. I don't really know what the response is to that, but I was making hydralisks and meant to make a bunch of mutas and hit the H instead of T.

I'm not taking it all too seriously, but just curious. I want to start off low and build my way up and figure it out as I go along.

Heh, the counter to that is just scouting and having map awareness, because they can't possibly defend all those bases if you know they're there. Sometimes I play people like that and I don't really change anything (maybe take my 4th faster), I just go kill their bases once I'm droned up and ready to make an army. Also, corruptors are good against both those units (I assume you mean carriers, not BCs - when fighting carriers with corruptors, make sure you focus down the carriers instead of fighting interceptors, also air armor upgrades are valuable because corruptors already have good armor and they'll keep them alive forever). One thing I do is try to get burrow early-ish (maybe when my lair is done) and plant lings at ~every base they could reasonably take, starting with their 3rd and 4th locations, but also make sure you're sending out overlords into gaps in the map and platforms so you have vision all over.

I was wondering how Blizzard was going to make money with the game now that it's free. Then I discovered the Co-Op missions. That mode is a blast. Probably going to try to get all the Zerg heroes to level 15.

What really sucks is that you never know what you're going to get in a partner. Sometimes, you get a guy who's good and you guys just split the map and the game is easy. Other times, the guy is just learning his new hero, so he doesn't have all the upgrades, but he at least knows the basics and can help. Other times, the guy just has no clue what to do and you're basically soloing the level (sometimes literally. Had one guy do literally nothing but mine for 20 minutes, then come in and say "sorry, I was eating and forgot I started a game.")

At my skill level, I can easily solo on Normal mode, but it's can be little difficult to do so on Hard.

Game needs to be taken out back and shot when NoRegret qualifies for his 2nd GSL.

We need the return of narwhal streams to teach us (and NoRegret's opponents, apparently) to play Zerg in the new meta

Code S starts in 34 minutes! Group A has Inno vs. Creator and Solar vs. Leenock.

Started playing again shortly before Christmas and it has taken me 200 games to go from whatever MMR I placed at in Plat to 4400 and D1. Master 3 is 4720, and that seems a lot further away than the numbers would indicate.

I don't really know modern builds or timings. I just like building Zerglings and killing people with them. I have yet to build a single Viper, and had maybe 10 games in total where a Hive was involved.

Nearly half of those games have been ZvZ.

Early on it seemed like I'd lose every ZvP that turns into a macro game, so my go-to is 13 gas 12 pool into build a hatch at their natural. 62% overall ZvP. They ALL build a wall on the low ground now. Last time I was playing, they'd all wall their ramp. These greedy low ground walls are so easy to slip through with early pressure, as long as I beat the shield batteries.

ZvT is my lowest winrate by a wide margin, and it's usually due to mass marines. Terran are 13/12-proof, so that could be my problem, too. As you can imagine, my macro mechanics are not stellar, and I never have more than 120 APM. I am really sad that a single Thor can now kill infinity mutas in 2 shots if you **** up the spread. This was not always the case.