1k extra gas is most of a geyser. As far as frenzy goes, it was just added to allow broodlords to counter swarm hosts. Now that SHs are out of the game, it makes no sense (and is bad for gameplay) that vipers can't yank brood lords.

I wonder what number will be higher on Wednesday night in the SSL Ro8 (spoiler on players involved if you aren't caught up):

How the **** can I cheese in zvz if You start with 14 drones

Drone to 14
Extractor (now 13/14) Put in 3 drones as soon as it finishes
Drone (14/14)
Spawning Pool (13/14)
If very large map, pull a drone to go find opponent
Drone (14/14)
Extractor (13/14)
Drone (14/14)
cancel extractor (15/14)
Overlord

Pull drones off gas at 100. As soon as pool is done, start ling speed and build 3 sets of lings. Next 2 larvae go to lings as well. Build Queen during the gap in larva.

Build a hatchery around 24 supply and use your zerglings to **** with his natural. At least half the time, you'll get a cancel on it.

You, meanwhile, have been droning back at home and are in a solid lead.

If you do NOT get a cancel on his hatch and he scares you off, you're still not that far behind. Your ling speed is faster than his so you can likely get a queen or two, and he probably built way too many lings, so you'll be ahead on drones.

But no, you can't 7 pool anymore. This is fine, because 7 pool worked almost never.

lol yeah that's pretty much what I did

In which Rogue tries some crazy **** against mech:

I tried the rogue composition. It's good but seeker missiles still wreck it pretty bad (even worse than with other compositions) since you have your whole hydra queen ball under the broodlord on hold position. If you do get seeker missile'd it gets really messy since the first instinct is to run away but then slow broodlords get picked apart by vikings and you can lose everything in a instant.

Interesting to abduct vikings all game long to thin them down.

Nothing pisses me off more than losing to just marines + medivacs

Now that the last 6 weeks of traveling and getting married and putting up with untimely work bull**** is over, hopefully I can catch up on GSL and maybe just maybe play a game or two.

the only thing that makes me wanna play starcraft is that its a much better drinking game than diablo

Hitman, the NA ladder king known for knocking your favorite players out of qualifiers with cheesy Protoss bull****, finally appeared IRL for the first time ever today in his WCS group. For the first time ever, the villain is unmasked.

I highly recommend watching all of his games.

http://www.twitch.tv/wcs/v/13073712

In Hitman's interview, he confirmed that he'll just go cheese/all-in every game.

That seems like a leak.

The question is, will the professionals be able to take off their greedy hats and actually play his game in the future.

Everyone already knows that anyway, though. And you never know, maybe he's playing mind games.

I watched the games though.

His opponents didn't play nearly safe enough. Even when it became clear that the cheeses were in progress, some rather questionable decisions were made.



Part of the problem is that "all-in" has completely lost all meaning with regard to Starcraft. Most pros still keep those strats in their back pocket, but the opponents generally try to skate by with the minimum on defense, and fall back on the macro game.

If you KNOW this dude goes cheese/all-in every single time, stop trying to squeeze out an extra drone or do some cute bull**** with oracles or whatever. Just ****ing play safe and send him back to the Ladder.

But here's the thing:
- Hitman already has a reputation for being the guy who exploits the **** out of Protoss bull**** to get high rankings on NA ladder, and there's no way Elazer went into this group w/o doing minimal research by talking to people who would know that
- Elazer had already played a series against Hitman where he tried three cheesy builds

Hitman, and his playstyle, are not an unknown quantity to pro SC2 players. He's knocked players as good as Scarlett out of WCS qualifiers before, and Scarlett knows exactly who he is and what he does. Saying out loud "I'm going to cheese and all-in" doesn't change anything about what his opponents will expect from him anyway.

hitmans army control with more than 10 units was ugly as f tho

lmao, WCS Ro16 groups:

Played for the first time in awhile last night and basically lost to a gold league mech player. He left the game, but I'm not sure why because he had it won, I was down to like 110 supply with a low-ish bank and crappy injects. I had transitioned from corruptor-BL into ultra-hydra but was low on both, and right before this engagement with his siege tanks where all he had to do was press "siege" to probably wipe my whole army he just quit instead.

Watching the Red Bull LotV archon mode event:

1. Apparently Blizzard decided to completely wreck the game in the latest patch? They removed MULEs entirely and "balanced" it by removing chrono and nerfing inject. So now Terran can't beat anyone because they have no minerals.
2. Plus they buffed charge so that zealots do 30 damage as soon as they connect with a charge. Fair!
3. Watching top-tier Koreans get destroyed by the likes of BeastyQT and Bails who have actually played this game before is funny but also a little offensive.
4. The Liberator is actually an amazing unit design.

What makes you say 4?

Found the Terran

Transforming units are cool in general. The area denial mechanic is cool, and subtly different from what siege tanks and widow mines do. In addition, the way the lag when the denial zone goes down presents a cool micro battle. Also, air siege damage breaks up TvT stalemates, which is a plus.

Played last night for the first time in a couple weeks and I guess a patch dropped shortly before I started my session.

I play Zerg and the games went as follows:

Normal macro game vs Terran
Proxy 3 rax marine
Proxy 3 rax marine from a different dude
Proxy 3 rax reaper from second proxy marine guy
Proxy 3 gate zealot
Adept all-in
Adept all-in with PYLON CANNONS (WTF?)
Adept all-in with pylon cannons
Adept all-in
ZvZ Muta battles on the really huge map. 3 Vipers kill 40 mutas in 1.2 seconds. Easy game.
Adept all-in with more pylon cannons
Baneling all-in
Adept all-in ... with, you guessed it, PYLON CANNONS!

I did pretty well and even won two games against two protoss players in Grandmaster 1v1 league. But sweet Jesus the cheese was real last night. This new Photon Overcharge on proxy pylons is quite possibly the most ******ed thing to ever be added to the game. I almost feel sorry for the Terran players. Almost, not quite. I lost my macro game vs the Terran because of Liberators. My 2x army supply just got CRUSHED because I overextended into Liberator AtG. When the dust settled, I just didn't have anything left that could shoot up. Planetary Fortress is also pretty good. I should've just sat back and teched to Brood Lords while he turtled behind his 2 PFs and Liberators.

I also really, REALLY hate Adepts. That unit is just disgustingly strong. It needs a health nerf.

In a game against one of the GM players I beat, I completely walled off my ramp on Bridgehead and just opened roaches, because **** Adepts. He shows up with his 8 adepts and stalkers and sentries and finds my walled/spined front. So he starts heading around to the back rocks. I immediately pull all of my drones and march my roaches across the map to try and base race.

We wind up killing each others' bases, but he got about 25 probes out to my 20 drones. I rebuilt at the top-right base (I started on the left) and he rebuilds outside of my back rocks. The next 25 mins was just a cluster**** of throws and counter-throws. I could NOT kill him because of this new Pylon overcharge. Admittedly, I didn't really know how it worked yet, but I marched roaches lings and queens into his base and just kept getting repelled. The Pylons were WRECKING my units. Just kill the pylons, you say? Good ****ing luck. You simply cannot engage into that ****.

I lost my new main to 4 DTs + Immortals, but was able to get a decently sized pack of mutas to take back map control. I eventually wound up winning just because I had more income and starved him out.

TL;DR - LOTV is hilariously broken right now, but it's fun nonetheless.

Hitman is dropping out of WCS for personal reasons.

My passion is lost again.

Hitman was the one guy who play protoss like he hated the race. Short and painless games every single time. Too bad he dropped out.
I'm excited for LOtV, I really like where the devs are taking the game.