Apparently there's a Brood War HD remaster being announced next month? Pure speculation, but I would assume it will include some basic esports features like production tabs and minimap pings, so we won't have to listen to casters explaining what a great feature it is that no one really knows what the players are doing.

yeah, i'm naturally very, very cagey about this (would make sense for a 20th anniversary edition or something), things like production tabs and other things that would make it easier for casters (heck, when it was first televised they didn't even have observer mode), maybe some new tilesets and cleaner sprites, bnet 2.0 integration and actually being able to work in win7+ without having a shieldbattery beta key (which i have, which is nice) or external launchers etc would be fine. the second they start doing things like "hey, let's fix scarab ai, let's fix building sizes so that walls work the way they do in sc2, let's make dragoons not ******ed, let's have auto mining/mass building selection" etc the thing is dead on arrival. or worse, if they actually bring out a balance patch

Wednesday's GSL is absolutely must-watch!

Gigantic new balance patch incoming!!

Way too long to summarize, but the key points are that all Terran mech units will now wreck the everliving **** out of all things, but siege tanks can't be picked up anymore. The Tempest is now bad, but interceptors are basically free and DTs have blink! Zerg aren't allowed to make ravagers any more, but now infestors can nydus themselves anywhere on the map and cast spells burrowed.

http://us.battle.net//sc2/en/blog/20241474

Spoilers for GSL from Friday:

Jesus, are they serious?

- Cyclone redesign going to range 6, 3 damage (+3 vs armored) attacking every 0.07 seconds means it does...85 dps vs armored? Is my math wrong? I've put "6 / 0.07" into the calculator like three times but I'm convinced I'm wrong because that number is so ****ing stupid. That's more than immortals. Oh and you can reactor them out but don't worry Blizzard thinks they're "fragile" while bumping them up to have more health than a stalker.
- Siege tank damage increase is going to be insanely annoying to deal with defensively when people rush with them
- Taking liberator +light damage away is cool and everything, but they don't really need it to obliterate mutas regardless, and it looks like the days of magic boxing Thors are over so you'll only need a couple of those to keep mutas away from your whole army still

I have to go catch the bus and I've only made it this far, this is going to ruin my day and I barely even play this game anymore

- Banshee speed upgrade: stupid, mostly makes them more annoying but not all that much stronger
- Viking +mechanical damage on ground: lol what the **** is this, they're anti-air and anti...stalker? I get the feeling this change isn't going to result in viking armies intentionally descending on stalkers anytime soon, they're just throwing **** at a wall
- Autoturret buff: didn't they already buff this for LotV?

- Tempest nerf: kinda feel bad for Protoss, never thought I'd say that, at least the new ability seems alright though I question if that makes it worth 6 supply (I guess they want to discourage massing tempests ever)
- Faster speed zealots: sounds cool, they were so slow before (not)
- Cheaper carrier interceptors: actually seems good!
- Blinking DTs: lol get the **** out of here Blizzard that is some of the dumbest **** I have ever seen

And now, the moment we've all been waiting for, ZERG CHANGES

- Swarm host: Let us preface this by looking at the first sentence Blizzard has to say about the swarm host:

As in, the role where it is never used? Go **** yourself. You can reduce its cost all you want and people still won't ever build them because they're hot garbage now.

- Ravager +armored: sure, let's make them die even faster now, what could go wrong
- Faster hydras on creep + increased range: awful, will make them super imbalanced against shorter range units and does nothing against mech since hydras are fragile as **** anyway
- Beefier banelings:

Yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that in the same balance changes where you make mech ****ing amazing, it probably won't incentivize Zerg to make banelings all that much by making sure that Terran will never, ever build the units that banelings are good against ever again, in large part because of this very baneling change.

- Teleporting infestors + burrowed fungals: stupid and gimmicky, I would rage so hard if I played another race and one overlord with vision at the edge of a mineral line meant that 4 infestors could just teleport in whenever and fungal my whole worker line
- Brood lord range reduction: Why, because the new and improved siege tanks need even more protection? So dumb.

None of the units that currently counter brood lords have been nerfed against brood lords in any way, but sure, that makes total sense.


Cliffs: go **** yourself Blizzard

They even have a gif of cyclones 1v1'ing a stalker in a couple seconds just to validate the math!

I agree that a lot of these changes sound unbelievably stupid, but I'm assuming they will beta the patch and fix the worst stuff and the rest will be good. Legacy in general is amazing, so I give the new balance team some credibility. The main place where I disagree with your analysis is saying that siege tanks are getting buffed. This is a gigantic nerf to siege tanks. The ability to lift siege tanks was probably the biggest buff to any unit in legacy (including the loltralisk +5 armor upgrade), so if you take it out you need to add a lot of stuff to maintain balance.

how can a biological unit like infestors magically teleport? I can see a race like Protoss having this technological ability, but not zerg.

Sea vs by.hero is a pretty good series to watch. Ignore the first game as it's just sea defending a poorly executed all in, but the rest is solid. Last game of the series is spectacular. Hero had some great ling micro vs mines in one of the games that needs to be seen to be believed

Very good series.

watched shuttle/jaehoon on catch up earlier. very, very good PvP series which had pretty much everything - close swinging games where they're defending/exploiting slight advantages in army/economy, straight up cheese, weird expand while dt rushing builds, a dark archon, players taking enough bases that they get as far as arbiters, the lot. highly recommended.

think flash/last is on tomorrow evening korea time

I've found that I really cannot get into BW. There are a couple big problems:

1. It's impossible to tell what's going on, because there is no information on screen. Maybe this is better if you've been closely following the meta for the past decade and you can infer the entire gist of the build just from seeing when the first zealot pops out, but if that's not the case, you're basically lost.

2. Some pivotal spells are broken and dumb. Dark Swarm is the lead example here. This is not a good ability because it last forever, provides functional invulnerability to all units in the AoE, and can be spammed with consume. Basically the only terran responses are to kill the defiler or run away. That's challenging and strategic, but it's not interesting. Guardian Shield and Blinding Cloud are examples of similar but better designed abilities in SC2.

3. A lot of the things that the players are doing are fundamentally dumb. Sure, it's cool that the top players have the sick APM to set all their workers to mine while maneuvering a zillion control groups across the map even though the pathing AI is so dumb that it gets stuck on ramps and buildings and anything else. But it's not interesting. Go watch some of Gumiho's games from Friday's GSL and you can see some really cool tactical micro play that involves him maneuvering his units to pick off isolated enemy units and then retreating back, all in the context of a larger battle. It's sick stuff. The BW equivalent is probably getting a control group of marines up a ramp against an opposing force. They're probably equivalently hard, but only one is actually interesting.

1) production tabs would be nice but i don't think it's impossible to see what's going on, and it's not even a meta thing, you can infer what's going on quite easily in most matchups

2) well i guess the alternative to swarm is that zerg dies every single time once terran gets vessels

3) i'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make here

I'm just saying that DS makes games less fun to watch and BW would be more enjoyable to watch if the game was balanced with it as less of a dumb broken ability.

Maybe if they made consume give less energy but since lings are basically free at that stage I don't know how it works

Modern style of TvZ is to include some level of mech by the stage defilers are out, and given tank splash damage works under swarm it's not the end of the world. Plus terran can easily get enough vessels that they can start irradiating lurkers/cows once they've hit the defilers

every race in BW seems to have ridic imba stuff but it all balances out in the end

unrelated to this, does anyone else get tilted with results oriented casters? watching spl kt vs skt and and wolf goes wins with the better build!!!1111

about to watch shuttle/last and notice that they're doing the asl and gsl finals back to back on the 10th, which is nice

sharp/sea was an excellent series as far as TvT goes

Holy crap game 3 might be the best PvT I've seen since the Free/Hiya one with the 3 port wraith into hidden nukes

GSL Ro4 spoilers (Don't read the spoiler, watch GSL Ro8 on it's absolutely incredible!):

asl spoilers

Watched games 1-3 of the finals before mobile internet died, game 1 was pretty intense then it mostly seemed/sounded like the other guy dominated

That was the best GSL finals of all times. ASL was MC/Seed level of quality.

Any good sites for just some basic build orders? I'm trying to play casually again and everything I can find is pre-lotv or more complicated than I'm looking for (for example the stuff at lotv.spawningtool.com that dominates google results I do not find very instructional). I play random so just looking for something decent to get me started with each class again, preferably faster builds for now then when I get the hang of things again might try more mid-late game stuff.

Shoutcraft Kings is worth watching. A one-off KotH series with a bunch of top Koreans and some foreigners. Some matchups that you don't usually see.