Starcraft II

[Solomon]

Imo, the only reason behind those win percentages is that Zerg is just so mechanically demanding out of the 3 races. Pooping creep tumors, using the tumors to build a highway, vomiting larvae, harassing with mutas, placing overlords in strategic locations to gain as much intel as possible, feeling the constant pressure to stay 1 base ahead versus T or P...no thanks, I'll just stick with chrono-boosting (and it's even forgiving if I forget about this too in the mid to late game) .

[ketchup]

PS. GSL finals tomorrow!!!1!!overlyexcitedpunctuation!!11!

Spoiler for those 0% of you that both care who's in the final and don't already know.

It's such a shame it's not (fake)boxer vs boxer. I was really looking forward to that. It'll be interesting to see if (fake)boxer sticks to his mass marine style. NesTea looked so solid against boxer I'm hoping we get some entertaining matches.

GSL 2 spoilers

You have to admit though, Nestea deserves to be there(more than wanting a BoxeR vs FoxeR finals). He has yet to lose ONE game from anyone. So his GSL 2 record is more than amazing. I think it will be very funny if Zerg wins GSL two times in a row. Honestly though, I'm always just rooting for the "underdog". In this case, it's always been FoxeR. He's so aggressive, that it's hard not to think of him as an underdog. I think Nestea is definitely favored in any case. Especially if you consider the "variety" of builds FoxeR has shown us.

[Tooveli]

Re: ketchup

You have to admit though, Nestea deserves to be there(more than wanting a BoxeR vs FoxeR finals). He has yet to lose ONE game from anyone. So his GSL 2 record is more than amazing. I think it will be very funny if Zerg wins GSL two times in a row. Honestly though, I'm always just rooting for the "underdog". In this case, it's always been FoxeR. He's so aggressive, that it's hard not to think of him as an underdog. I think Nestea is definitely favored in any case. Especially if you consider the "variety" of builds FoxeR has shown us.

Yeah - NesTea has really impressed me but I'm also rooting for FoxeR. When he micros his marines against the banelings it actually gives the Terran some personality as opposed to the moronic clump of destruction you get at my level. At least, that's how I see things.

As an aside, I'm not sure if its disadvantageous to personify the units quite as much as I naturally seem to. I do it in go too. Stones always look lonely or happy or bored etc. In Sc2 small marine forces look eager and excited (especially when they stim) while large bio-balls look bored, regimented and thoughtless.

[yoyoma]

FoxeR never ending marines gogogoooooooo!

Yesterday near the end of a game that was in the mop up phase I had ~20 marines near enemy banes, so I thought oh I'll see if I can split my marines like FoxeR. The result looked like the hokey-pokey. All 20 marines back, all 20 marines right, all 20 marines left, all 20 marines die.

[Tooveli]

Imo, the only reason behind those win percentages is that Zerg is just so mechanically demanding out of the 3 races. Pooping creep tumors, using the tumors to build a highway, vomiting larvae, harassing with mutas, placing overlords in strategic locations to gain as much intel as possible, feeling the constant pressure to stay 1 base ahead versus T or P...no thanks, I'll just stick with chrono-boosting (and it's even forgiving if I forget about this too in the mid to late game) .

Ultimately though (if I want to keep improving) I'm eventually going to have to get my multitasking skills to the same level. It's just that I can play as Protoss at a higher level than Zerg before I do so. If I play as Protoss I could continue to improve and climb the ladder but eventually I'll get to a point where I hit a wall and have to go back and actually learn to become better at multitasking. I think this point will be quite harsh and it will become quite a struggle to get stronger. With Zerg, I'm already having to learn these skills. I feel like the struggle to improve will be much more linear even though it's a lot tougher in the short term.

[Solomon]

Imo, the only reason behind those win percentages is that Zerg is just so mechanically demanding out of the 3 races. Pooping creep tumors, using the tumors to build a highway, vomiting larvae, harassing with mutas, placing overlords in strategic locations to gain as much intel as possible, feeling the constant pressure to stay 1 base ahead versus T or P...no thanks, I'll just stick with chrono-boosting (and it's even forgiving if I forget about this too in the mid to late game) .

Ultimately though (if I want to keep improving) I'm eventually going to have to get my multitasking skills to the same level. It's just that I can play as Protoss at a higher level than Zerg before I do so. If I play as Protoss I could continue to improve and climb the ladder but eventually I'll get to a point where I hit a wall and have to go back and actually learn to become better at multitasking. I think this point will be quite harsh and it will become quite a struggle to get stronger. With Zerg, I'm already having to learn these skills. I feel like the struggle to improve will be much more linear even though it's a lot tougher in the short term.

True, but I think it's quite possible to play a Protoss game where there's just as much multitasking involved. For example, a heavy Phoenix + warp prism harass play .

[Tooveli]

FoxeR never ending marines gogogoooooooo!

Yesterday near the end of a game that was in the mop up phase I had ~20 marines near enemy banes, so I thought oh I'll see if I can split my marines like FoxeR. The result looked like the hokey-pokey. All 20 marines back, all 20 marines right, all 20 marines left, all 20 marines die.

When I first played Zerg I wanted to kill some marines with banelings.
I had 40 or so zerglings and decided to morph them all to banelings.
So, I selected everything and hit zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
(Grid hotkeys = z for morph beneling)
(Incidentaly, grid hotkeys also = z for explode baneling)
I guess I don't have to tell you what happened when I selected everything and went to morph another couple of banelings.
-> ->

[Tooveli]

Imo, the only reason behind those win percentages is that Zerg is just so mechanically demanding out of the 3 races. Pooping creep tumors, using the tumors to build a highway, vomiting larvae, harassing with mutas, placing overlords in strategic locations to gain as much intel as possible, feeling the constant pressure to stay 1 base ahead versus T or P...no thanks, I'll just stick with chrono-boosting (and it's even forgiving if I forget about this too in the mid to late game) .

Ultimately though (if I want to keep improving) I'm eventually going to have to get my multitasking skills to the same level. It's just that I can play as Protoss at a higher level than Zerg before I do so. If I play as Protoss I could continue to improve and climb the ladder but eventually I'll get to a point where I hit a wall and have to go back and actually learn to become better at multitasking. I think this point will be quite harsh and it will become quite a struggle to get stronger. With Zerg, I'm already having to learn these skills. I feel like the struggle to improve will be much more linear even though it's a lot tougher in the short term.

True, but I think it's quite possible to play a Protoss game where there's just as much multitasking involved. For example, a heavy Phoenix + warp prism harass play .

That's what I was trying to say. Eventually I'll want to have the same level of multitasking with both the races. It's always going to be beneficial to have higher APM/multitasking whichever race you play. It's just that with Zerg I need it now just for macro+scouting. With Protoss I won't need it until I get to the stage where I need to incorporate fancy things and high-level micro/harass.

[Time]

So I mentioned earlier that people can add me (time.175) on bnet and I'll help them. I played one person today, which was perfectly fine and I hope it helped him improve, but it's kind of silly for me to play a bronze player. It's like a 10kyu playing a 5dan even. It's kind of hard to learn that way. The best thing to do would be to get someone else around your skill level and have me obs or something.

Also some general advice to anyone below high diamond:

1) Build more probes!!!!!1!1!!1

Seriously. Just keep making them until you're making 80 in any 20+ minute game. Then maybe you can cut back a little...

2) Watch some replays of top players (http://www.sc2rep.com)

Since your build orders (and general unit compositions) are probably horribly inefficient, and you may not be able to figure out how to make them better, this can speed up that process a lot. Of course as long as you're reasonably determined you can do the same thing by just playing hundreds of games, and in the end, this is what is required to get really good.

3) Try not to cheese (unless it's just for fun)

Yes, you can get from 100 bronze to 500 gold by doing nothing but 2 gate proxy against P, proxy void ray rush against T and 4 gate against Z, but other than learning how to 4 gate well, you won't really get any better (except maybe a little better at microing). Cheesing when you're tired or annoyed is always fun, though! Plus it's super fun when your opponent cries like a girl.

4) Despite what I said in 3, it's important to be good at aggressive 1 base builds like 3 rax or 4 gate

These builds are typically very 1 dimensional (until you get very good), and so it's easier to refine and make these builds very efficient, which will help you learn some basic ways to do that which will help you refine more challenging strategies when you get better. Plus, you're probably not being aggressive and harassing enough, and it's good to learn how effective it can be.

[fwiffo]

Regarding the GSL finals:

Anybody else a little disappointed, particularly in the last game? I mean, it was cool that it went 7 games, but they seemed pretty one-dimensional. Fake Boxer (who I guess is OptimusPrime now) did basically the same thing the whole tournament, other than the Thor drop on Temple, which is a very standard abusive TvZ build on that map. He also tried to get away with the exact same cheese in multiple games. I was glad that he got punished for it, but it did lead to a pretty anti-climactic ending (though not nearly as anti-climactic as the MLG finals).

Not to mention, none of the games lasted very long, we never got to see any big interesting end-game or big macro.

[Solomon]

Regarding the GSL finals:

Anybody else a little disappointed, particularly in the last game? I mean, it was cool that it went 7 games, but they seemed pretty one-dimensional. Fake Boxer (who I guess is OptimusPrime now) did basically the same thing the whole tournament, other than the Thor drop on Temple, which is a very standard abusive TvZ build on that map. He also tried to get away with the exact same cheese in multiple games. I was glad that he got punished for it, but it did lead to a pretty anti-climactic ending (though not nearly as anti-climactic as the MLG finals).

Not to mention, none of the games lasted very long, we never got to see any big interesting end-game or big macro.

Not gonna hide what I'm writing cause it's not spoiling anything: the games weren't too bad, but the thing that drove me absolutely insane was the game time to commercial ratio. Kind of reminded me of another event....STICK A FORK IN THOSE BUNS.

[fwiffo]

I'm on a horse.

[Tooveli]

I think the scv push in the last game was a homage to the real BoxeR which makes it kinda cool IMO. I think the series only needed one of the games to be a long macro game and it would have been amazing... building-kick

[MountainGo]

I'm so surprised people didn't like that last game. *spoiler warning* After seeing each player's build, it seemed obvious FoxeR was going to win, but NesTea knew what he had to do--pull an absurd number of Drones off of mining (Was it all of them? I forget.) to try to surround the marines. Do or die. When he chased them halfway home and actually managed to get the surround, I went berserk. What a way to end an action-packed best of 7. There was a long period at the end of that game when FoxeR had clearly lost but didn't surrender, seemingly because he was in shock along with the rest of us. It was full circle from the first game where both players did basically the same thing but FoxeR won--on a map where it should have actually been harder for him.

Okay, so there were no super long macro games. But that's how our game often goes. I think the games did a good job of showing both player's skill. It's not like there were any strange happenings or freak accidents that somehow gave one player the win undeservedly. I, for one, loved the series.

[fwiffo]

Well, the last game is pretty exciting in isolation. And Foxer's reaction at the end was pretty dramatic. But again, he already did that cheese earlier in the series. It may be a pretty strong cheese, but I wouldn't expect it to work twice.

Probably the fact that it was all taking place at a screw-all time in the morning reduced my enjoyment somewhat. Most of the games all sorta bled together in my mind.