the main threat of void rays isn't in a normal army composition, it's if the protoss rushes them
with good micro, all three races have a ridiculously hard time repelling a void ray rush by a good player (see: whitera winning a bajillion games by rushing void rays against really good players)
Yes this is true. But if you let your opponent mass VRs and then get them all the way to the back of your base without scouting it or pushing and crushing him yourself then, you kindof deserve to lose.
Void Rays are so damn slow, take forever to build and are DAMN expensive. I go 3 warpgate then stargate and build 2-3 and micro the shit out of them while pushing on there front door.
I use it since alot of terrans just wall off siege up and it takes forever to crack. This way they either split there forces and i break in the front or there workers/cc gets wiped out. GG turtle terran.
edit: gnometank while that sounds good it does carry some risk.
It doesn't just "sound" good. It's something a lot of really good players do quite a bit, and it's something you should certainly be aware of. You can't always trust your first scout, which is why you need to keep scouting pressure up. Too many new players scout once, then go about their day, assured that what they saw is what they will get.
Oh i completely agree. If im not pushing early then ill always send another scout and see whats up. Im just saying newer players shouldnt try to use this as a "trick" since it takes a decent opponent to at least recognise what is being scouted in the first place.
Oh and i suppose i should send mnc a message so he can change my "rank".
StokedUp on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Gamertag(SSF4/MW2)StokedAidzzzSC2 ID Stoked.655 Uploaded SC2 Replays
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited July 2010
VR's are popular again post-release because there is a whole new crop of players that doesn't see them coming. Give it a month, they'll be back to where they were in beta: Strong, but not an instant win.
Yes this is true. But if you let your opponent mass VRs and then get them all the way to the back of your base without scouting it or pushing and crushing him yourself then, you kindof deserve to lose.
Void Rays are so damn slow, take forever to build and are DAMN expensive. I go 3 warpgate then stargate and build 2-3 and micro the shit out of them while pushing on there front door.
I use it since alot of terrans just wall off siege up and it takes forever to crack. This way they either split there forces and i break in the front or there workers/cc gets wiped out. GG turtle terran.
edit: gnometank while that sounds good it does carry some risk.
It doesn't just "sound" good. It's something a lot of really good players do quite a bit, and it's something you should certainly be aware of. You can't always trust your first scout, which is why you need to keep scouting pressure up. Too many new players scout once, then go about their day, assured that what they saw is what they will get.
Oh i completely agree. If im not pushing early then ill always send another scout and see whats up. Im just saying newer players shouldnt try to use this as a "trick" since it takes a decent opponent to at least recognise what is being scouted in the first place.
Oh and i suppose i should send mnc a message so he can change my "rank".
Oh, I agree. I'm not suggesting all of our fresh players go and do this, I just think they need to be aware of it. The head fake is a tactic, and it will be used against you if you're that guy that scouts once then goes in to turtle mode.
VR's are popular again post-release because there is a whole new crop of players that doesn't see them coming. Give it a month, they'll be back to where they were in beta: Strong, but not an instant win.
Yeah, that's my read on it as well. People freak out over the VRs when an appropriate number of marines/vikings will eat them.
Edit: a really good toss player will juke you with the VRs. Build 2 or 3 and send them to the base to harass the mineral lines. The opponent may then counter the VRs with a mass of some unit (say, marines). Meanwhile the toss player is planning to counter his counter (mass zealots, colossus, etc.) Works really well. So WhiteRa do this a lot, seemed pretty effective.
Alright, currently trying out the campaign, learning the ropes.
I got some technical questions that will hopefully help me to learn the ropes faster.
1. Is there a way to autoselect my entire unit and have them move to a certain spot?
2. Is there also a way to autocycle between my classes (SVC, Marine, Medic, etc)? Right now it's kind of a pain to move around the map looking for stragglers.
3. Same question but with the different kinds of structures (Barracks, Supply Depot, etc).
4. Approximately how many marines can one medic micromanage at once in regards to healing?
5. Is there a way to auto login when staring the game so I don't have to keep putting my password?
1. Double click a unit or control click it will select all that type of unit on the screen. Hitting control+<number> will bind that group to that number. Holding shift will add a unit to that control group.
2. You can hit tab once you have them all selected to cycle between them, but you pretty much have to find stragglers to select them.
3. Tab again, they have to be grouped, except for your Command Center (clarification: as in it does not need to be grouped and it works with Nexus/Hatcheries) that you can cycle through all of with backspace (far as I know those are the only ones, anyway).
4. I don't know, but be warned it doesn't matter much anyway as Medics don't exist in muliplayer. It's medivacs instead. And I don't know how many they can heal well either :P.
5. Nope.
Thanks. I'm still learning the ropes through Campaign (I won't dare try Multiplayer until I feel semi-competent, although I'd be happy to play with anyone tonight so long as they set their newbie handicaps on). I get the concept well enough, but my biggest problem is losing track of stragglers.
I'm also wondering if there's a way to assign a class (including newly created troops of that type) to automatically go to a certain point. Like, say I want any SCV to automatically move to a station to maintain it, and so on.
Lots of people on, there should be a lobby goin on right now
Ezekiel on
I will throw you on the land and hurl you on the open field. I will let all the birds of the air settle on you and all the beasts of the earth gorge themselves on you. I will spread your flesh on the mountains and fill the valleys with your remains. I will drench the land with your flowing blood all the way to the mountains, and the ravines will be filled with your flesh. - Ezekiel 32: 4-6
Wow, I'm... dumb. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't ever find the researches for stimpacks and siege mode. I didn't realize you had to click on the actual tech lab itself. I thought they just enabled the units in the attached building and that was it.
I'm also wondering if there's a way to assign a class (including newly created troops of that type) to automatically go to a certain point. Like, say I want any SCV to automatically move to a station to maintain it, and so on.
If you have an SCV building something, you can shift-click back on the minerals and that will cause him to return immediately after he finishes the build. Though I am not sure if you already knew that or not. Some kind of "Protect" function would be nice.
Foolish Chaos on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
VR's are popular again post-release because there is a whole new crop of players that doesn't see them coming. Give it a month, they'll be back to where they were in beta: Strong, but not an instant win.
Yeah, that's my read on it as well. People freak out over the VRs when an appropriate number of marines/vikings will eat them.
Edit: a really good toss player will juke you with the VRs. Build 2 or 3 and send them to the base to harass the mineral lines. The opponent may then counter the VRs with a mass of some unit (say, marines). Meanwhile the toss player is planning to counter his counter (mass zealots, colossus, etc.) Works really well. So WhiteRa do this a lot, seemed pretty effective.
This is a great, great point. I have found, just like you stated, that sometimes the fear of Void Rays is as strong as the unit itself. So much so that one of my favorite tactics is dropping a Star Gate (which I plan to use to produces phoenixes for harassment), making my opponent think I am going VR, and using Sentry Hallucination to really reinforce the thought. Hallucination is one of those really underused skills that can have huge psychological dividends early game before everyone is draped in detection.
I played 3 1 vs 1 placement game before my friend found me via facebook and we played 6 3 vs 3 games.
Won three of them.
I won all three 1 vs 1 matches with 1 1 1 and medivac drops. Granted from watching the replays my opponents aren't all that great.
I noticed a lot of new maps in the rotation and that screwed me over because I've never played on them before. Can't even seal my enterance properly on one of them and lost to a massive ling rush.
On maps that I know... I cheese pretty well.
Nylonathetep on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I'm also wondering if there's a way to assign a class (including newly created troops of that type) to automatically go to a certain point. Like, say I want any SCV to automatically move to a station to maintain it, and so on.
If you have an SCV building something, you can shift-click back on the minerals and that will cause him to return immediately after he finishes the build. Though I am not sure if you already knew that or not. Some kind of "Protect" function would be nice.
Every building has a waypoint that you can set by selecting the building and right clicking on the ground. All new units produced will then go there. SCV's can also auto repair if you right click the repair button. An SCV will auto repair anything that comes in to his little area, including mech units, buildings, etc. One of my favorite siege tank tactics is to set an auto-repair SCV just behind their line. He'll automatically run up and repair them if they take damage.
Broke down and installed and decided to do a couple of placement matches just to get back in the swing of things before going to my gig tonight and going to sleep early for my audition tomorrow.
Lost the first placement match because Jesus was I rusty. Oh god it was painful. I lost to a non-chronoboosted zealot attack from a Bronze player. Left a terrible taste in my mouth.
Of course, then I did a backdoor attack on Sands against a toss, took out all his probes, then just sat back, expanded again, teched to hydras, and eventually stomped everything in a two-pronged attack. And then I was vT on Kulas, did an FE into Speedling/Baneling/Muta, and took him out on my first muta harass by adding a couple of banelings when I saw how weakly he was defended.
My macro still feels awful and I ended both of the wins with somewhere above 1k minerals, but I'm slowly getting back. Unfortunately, that is all I can play 'till I get back tomorrow. Maybe I'll start some SP too.
Also, I forget my number, it's 574 or something like that, I'll post it tomorrow.
I'm finding 3 or 4 void Rays are almost always nice to have.
Harassment or in the backlines as a damage augment. if they're covered by some immortals and/or stalkers VRs are great for picking off high priority targets
I'm also wondering if there's a way to assign a class (including newly created troops of that type) to automatically go to a certain point. Like, say I want any SCV to automatically move to a station to maintain it, and so on.
If you have an SCV building something, you can shift-click back on the minerals and that will cause him to return immediately after he finishes the build. Though I am not sure if you already knew that or not. Some kind of "Protect" function would be nice.
Every building has a waypoint that you can set by selecting the building and right clicking on the ground. All new units produced will then go there. SCV's can also auto repair if you right click the repair button. An SCV will auto repair anything that comes in to his little area, including mech units, buildings, etc. One of my favorite siege tank tactics is to set an auto-repair SCV just behind their line. He'll automatically run up and repair them if they take damage.
Very useful, thanks.
Also, just to continue honing the basic skills, is it better to keep an attacking unit bunched together when facing an enemy swarm, or spreading them around individually? I'm replaying the first challenge to try different methods to reduce casualties, and I'm pretty sure troop placement makes a big difference.
I also wish there was a way to map the camera to something besides the middle mouse button. Just doesn't feel smooth, and neither does the arrow keys. I'd prefer being able to hold right click to drag the map around.
If you're sneaking VRs into the back of a base and gonna harass minerals, I cannot stress enough how much I recommend targetting a Vespene gesyser first. Lets you build up a charge, so by the time they mobilize anything back there you're fully charged and able to cut stuff down in seconds.
Wait, I can have my SCVs waypoint to the minerals, meaning they will begin gathering minerals right away? I manage to have a SCV or two sitting around for a few after spawn every once in a while, this will be moderately helpful.
Also being able to say "go back to mining, slave!" after building automatically is nice too.
Anyone else accidently have all their SCVs run into the CC once at the start of their first 3 games because they kept accidently clicking that button instead of waypoint?
Disrupter on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I'm also wondering if there's a way to assign a class (including newly created troops of that type) to automatically go to a certain point. Like, say I want any SCV to automatically move to a station to maintain it, and so on.
If you have an SCV building something, you can shift-click back on the minerals and that will cause him to return immediately after he finishes the build. Though I am not sure if you already knew that or not. Some kind of "Protect" function would be nice.
Every building has a waypoint that you can set by selecting the building and right clicking on the ground. All new units produced will then go there. SCV's can also auto repair if you right click the repair button. An SCV will auto repair anything that comes in to his little area, including mech units, buildings, etc. One of my favorite siege tank tactics is to set an auto-repair SCV just behind their line. He'll automatically run up and repair them if they take damage.
Very useful, thanks.
Also, just to continue honing the basic skills, is it better to keep an attacking unit bunched together when facing an enemy swarm, or spreading them around individually? I'm replaying the first challenge to try different methods to reduce casualties, and I'm pretty sure troop placement makes a big difference.
I also wish there was a way to map the camera to something besides the middle mouse button. Just doesn't feel smooth, and neither does the arrow keys. I'd prefer being able to hold right click to drag the map around.
Troop placement and movement mid fight make a huge difference. That's what we call "micro". To really see it in action, do the first Terran challenge, and on the Hellion/Zergling part, try not to lose any Hellions. Yes, it's possible, you just have to get good at moving them around, and positioning them such that each fire blast hits as many zerglings as possible. Get really good at Attack-Move and Stop as well, as those are huge micro devices.
Wait, I can have my SCVs waypoint to the minerals, meaning they will begin gathering minerals right away? I manage to have a SCV or two sitting around for a few after spawn every once in a while, this will be moderately helpful.
Also being able to say "go back to mining, slave!" after building automatically is nice too.
Anyone else accidently have all their SCVs run into the CC once at the start of their first 3 games because they kept accidently clicking that button instead of waypoint?
Yes, you should absolutely have your command centers waypoint set to it's mineral patch unless you have a specific reason to have it elsewhere. Then all newly created SCV's will go mine, and to top it off, they will mine intelligently and spread themselves out across the crystals for maximum throughput.
e: To expound on this. The auto worker waypoint is great, but very early game, you should control the waypoint to be on empty, or under utilized, patches yourself. The "smart" mineral algorithm is good, but it takes about half a second for your SCV to realize it's on an over utilized crystal and to move itself. If you do this yourself early game, you can buy yourself precious seconds.
I'm also wondering if there's a way to assign a class (including newly created troops of that type) to automatically go to a certain point. Like, say I want any SCV to automatically move to a station to maintain it, and so on.
If you have an SCV building something, you can shift-click back on the minerals and that will cause him to return immediately after he finishes the build. Though I am not sure if you already knew that or not. Some kind of "Protect" function would be nice.
Every building has a waypoint that you can set by selecting the building and right clicking on the ground. All new units produced will then go there. SCV's can also auto repair if you right click the repair button. An SCV will auto repair anything that comes in to his little area, including mech units, buildings, etc. One of my favorite siege tank tactics is to set an auto-repair SCV just behind their line. He'll automatically run up and repair them if they take damage.
Very useful, thanks.
Also, just to continue honing the basic skills, is it better to keep an attacking unit bunched together when facing an enemy swarm, or spreading them around individually? I'm replaying the first challenge to try different methods to reduce casualties, and I'm pretty sure troop placement makes a big difference.
I also wish there was a way to map the camera to something besides the middle mouse button. Just doesn't feel smooth, and neither does the arrow keys. I'd prefer being able to hold right click to drag the map around.
When attacking clumping or not clumping is very situational and really depends on what you are facing. Your zealots vs. a swarm of zergling? You want to clump so each zealot is attacked by the fewest zerglings possible. With Templar, Collossi, Tanks or Infestors in play you want to be spread out to avoid thier area effects. Most of the time when you get to huge masses of units though you will have them in a ball out of convenience unless you have absurd clicking skills.
In general, with melee units you want to surround the opponent and not get surrounded yourself, and with ranged units you want a nice big concave. So if your opponent is bunched into a tiny choke point and you've got a huge half-circle around them shooting at them, you are in an incredibly more advantageous position.
Khavall on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
In general, with melee units you want to surround the opponent and not get surrounded yourself, and with ranged units you want a nice big concave. So if your opponent is bunched into a tiny choke point and you've got a huge half-circle around them shooting at them, you are in an incredibly more advantageous position.
* Unless your ranged unit is stalkers, then you you might as well blink surround the opponent because it's fun and hilarious.
If you're sneaking VRs into the back of a base and gonna harass minerals, I cannot stress enough how much I recommend targetting a Vespene gesyser first. Lets you build up a charge, so by the time they mobilize anything back there you're fully charged and able to cut stuff down in seconds.
Yeah, VR might be fragile, but if they get a charge up before the cavalry gets there, you are SCREWED. VR's can't outrange turrents/spore colonies can they?
Stalkers give me more problems than any unit in the game. Ugh.
Ezekiel on
I will throw you on the land and hurl you on the open field. I will let all the birds of the air settle on you and all the beasts of the earth gorge themselves on you. I will spread your flesh on the mountains and fill the valleys with your remains. I will drench the land with your flowing blood all the way to the mountains, and the ravines will be filled with your flesh. - Ezekiel 32: 4-6
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
If you're sneaking VRs into the back of a base and gonna harass minerals, I cannot stress enough how much I recommend targetting a Vespene gesyser first. Lets you build up a charge, so by the time they mobilize anything back there you're fully charged and able to cut stuff down in seconds.
Yeah, VR might be fragile, but if they get a charge up before the cavalry gets there, you are SCREWED. VR's can't outrange turrents/spore colonies can they?
Stalkers give me more problems than any unit in the game. Ugh.
Not shocking. With upgrades and blink, Stalkers are easily the best pre-tier-2 unit in the game, and one of the few that stays relevant and useful all the way to late game.
e: Hydralisks would be the other unit in this category, though I'm not sure if Hydras are considered tier 2 or not. I guess they are tier 1.5 like stalkers, since they don't require a lair?
e2: They do require a lair, doh. You can tell I don't play Zerg much.
Wait, I can have my SCVs waypoint to the minerals, meaning they will begin gathering minerals right away? I manage to have a SCV or two sitting around for a few after spawn every once in a while, this will be moderately helpful.
Also being able to say "go back to mining, slave!" after building automatically is nice too.
Anyone else accidently have all their SCVs run into the CC once at the start of their first 3 games because they kept accidently clicking that button instead of waypoint?
Yes, you should absolutely have your command centers waypoint set to it's mineral patch unless you have a specific reason to have it elsewhere. Then all newly created SCV's will go mine, and to top it off, they will mine intelligently and spread themselves out across the crystals for maximum throughput.
e: To expound on this. The auto worker waypoint is great, but very early game, you should control the waypoint to be on empty, or under utilized, patches yourself. The "smart" mineral algorithm is good, but it takes about half a second for your SCV to realize it's on an over utilized crystal and to move itself. If you do this yourself early game, you can buy yourself precious seconds.
Didn't someone figure out that there is actually no difference at all between manually doing it and letting it sort itself out?
Ezekiel on
I will throw you on the land and hurl you on the open field. I will let all the birds of the air settle on you and all the beasts of the earth gorge themselves on you. I will spread your flesh on the mountains and fill the valleys with your remains. I will drench the land with your flowing blood all the way to the mountains, and the ravines will be filled with your flesh. - Ezekiel 32: 4-6
0
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Wait, I can have my SCVs waypoint to the minerals, meaning they will begin gathering minerals right away? I manage to have a SCV or two sitting around for a few after spawn every once in a while, this will be moderately helpful.
Also being able to say "go back to mining, slave!" after building automatically is nice too.
Anyone else accidently have all their SCVs run into the CC once at the start of their first 3 games because they kept accidently clicking that button instead of waypoint?
Yes, you should absolutely have your command centers waypoint set to it's mineral patch unless you have a specific reason to have it elsewhere. Then all newly created SCV's will go mine, and to top it off, they will mine intelligently and spread themselves out across the crystals for maximum throughput.
e: To expound on this. The auto worker waypoint is great, but very early game, you should control the waypoint to be on empty, or under utilized, patches yourself. The "smart" mineral algorithm is good, but it takes about half a second for your SCV to realize it's on an over utilized crystal and to move itself. If you do this yourself early game, you can buy yourself precious seconds.
Didn't someone figure out that there is actually no difference at all between manually doing it and letting it sort itself out?
If they did, they didn't tell me, or all the pro players that do it and recommend you do it to (Day[9] being at the top of the list).
Oh yeah, and the shift clicking to queue up orders is the -best thing ever-
You will really love shift-clicking when you realize it's "smart", and will generally do what you think it should do in spell cast cases. For instance, shift-blink some stalkers across a ravine. If there is not room for all the stalkers, the first group will blink, then move out of the way, and then the second group will blink over.
Wait, I can have my SCVs waypoint to the minerals, meaning they will begin gathering minerals right away? I manage to have a SCV or two sitting around for a few after spawn every once in a while, this will be moderately helpful.
Also being able to say "go back to mining, slave!" after building automatically is nice too.
Anyone else accidently have all their SCVs run into the CC once at the start of their first 3 games because they kept accidently clicking that button instead of waypoint?
Yes, you should absolutely have your command centers waypoint set to it's mineral patch unless you have a specific reason to have it elsewhere. Then all newly created SCV's will go mine, and to top it off, they will mine intelligently and spread themselves out across the crystals for maximum throughput.
e: To expound on this. The auto worker waypoint is great, but very early game, you should control the waypoint to be on empty, or under utilized, patches yourself. The "smart" mineral algorithm is good, but it takes about half a second for your SCV to realize it's on an over utilized crystal and to move itself. If you do this yourself early game, you can buy yourself precious seconds.
Didn't someone figure out that there is actually no difference at all between manually doing it and letting it sort itself out?
If they did, they didn't tell me, or all the pro players that do it and recommend you do it to (Day[9] being at the top of the list).
He used to talk about how good splitting was too until the same thing happened....no difference. All it gets you is a chance to fuck it up. Tryin to find link for you.
Ezekiel on
I will throw you on the land and hurl you on the open field. I will let all the birds of the air settle on you and all the beasts of the earth gorge themselves on you. I will spread your flesh on the mountains and fill the valleys with your remains. I will drench the land with your flowing blood all the way to the mountains, and the ravines will be filled with your flesh. - Ezekiel 32: 4-6
Posts
with good micro, all three races have a ridiculously hard time repelling a void ray rush by a good player (see: whitera winning a bajillion games by rushing void rays against really good players)
Oh i completely agree. If im not pushing early then ill always send another scout and see whats up. Im just saying newer players shouldnt try to use this as a "trick" since it takes a decent opponent to at least recognise what is being scouted in the first place.
Oh and i suppose i should send mnc a message so he can change my "rank".
Gamertag(SSF4/MW2)StokedAidzzzSC2 ID Stoked.655
Uploaded SC2 Replays
Oh, I agree. I'm not suggesting all of our fresh players go and do this, I just think they need to be aware of it. The head fake is a tactic, and it will be used against you if you're that guy that scouts once then goes in to turtle mode.
Yeah, that's my read on it as well. People freak out over the VRs when an appropriate number of marines/vikings will eat them.
Edit: a really good toss player will juke you with the VRs. Build 2 or 3 and send them to the base to harass the mineral lines. The opponent may then counter the VRs with a mass of some unit (say, marines). Meanwhile the toss player is planning to counter his counter (mass zealots, colossus, etc.) Works really well. So WhiteRa do this a lot, seemed pretty effective.
PSN: Threeve703
Thanks. I'm still learning the ropes through Campaign (I won't dare try Multiplayer until I feel semi-competent, although I'd be happy to play with anyone tonight so long as they set their newbie handicaps on). I get the concept well enough, but my biggest problem is losing track of stragglers.
I'm also wondering if there's a way to assign a class (including newly created troops of that type) to automatically go to a certain point. Like, say I want any SCV to automatically move to a station to maintain it, and so on.
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Favorite thing ever is setting the SCV rally point TO the minerals. It's great. (And probably super basic, but shut up, it's awesome!)
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If you have an SCV building something, you can shift-click back on the minerals and that will cause him to return immediately after he finishes the build. Though I am not sure if you already knew that or not. Some kind of "Protect" function would be nice.
This is a great, great point. I have found, just like you stated, that sometimes the fear of Void Rays is as strong as the unit itself. So much so that one of my favorite tactics is dropping a Star Gate (which I plan to use to produces phoenixes for harassment), making my opponent think I am going VR, and using Sentry Hallucination to really reinforce the thought. Hallucination is one of those really underused skills that can have huge psychological dividends early game before everyone is draped in detection.
I played 3 1 vs 1 placement game before my friend found me via facebook and we played 6 3 vs 3 games.
Won three of them.
I won all three 1 vs 1 matches with 1 1 1 and medivac drops. Granted from watching the replays my opponents aren't all that great.
I noticed a lot of new maps in the rotation and that screwed me over because I've never played on them before. Can't even seal my enterance properly on one of them and lost to a massive ling rush.
On maps that I know... I cheese pretty well.
Every building has a waypoint that you can set by selecting the building and right clicking on the ground. All new units produced will then go there. SCV's can also auto repair if you right click the repair button. An SCV will auto repair anything that comes in to his little area, including mech units, buildings, etc. One of my favorite siege tank tactics is to set an auto-repair SCV just behind their line. He'll automatically run up and repair them if they take damage.
Lost the first placement match because Jesus was I rusty. Oh god it was painful. I lost to a non-chronoboosted zealot attack from a Bronze player. Left a terrible taste in my mouth.
Of course, then I did a backdoor attack on Sands against a toss, took out all his probes, then just sat back, expanded again, teched to hydras, and eventually stomped everything in a two-pronged attack. And then I was vT on Kulas, did an FE into Speedling/Baneling/Muta, and took him out on my first muta harass by adding a couple of banelings when I saw how weakly he was defended.
My macro still feels awful and I ended both of the wins with somewhere above 1k minerals, but I'm slowly getting back. Unfortunately, that is all I can play 'till I get back tomorrow. Maybe I'll start some SP too.
Also, I forget my number, it's 574 or something like that, I'll post it tomorrow.
Harassment or in the backlines as a damage augment. if they're covered by some immortals and/or stalkers VRs are great for picking off high priority targets
Very useful, thanks.
Also, just to continue honing the basic skills, is it better to keep an attacking unit bunched together when facing an enemy swarm, or spreading them around individually? I'm replaying the first challenge to try different methods to reduce casualties, and I'm pretty sure troop placement makes a big difference.
I also wish there was a way to map the camera to something besides the middle mouse button. Just doesn't feel smooth, and neither does the arrow keys. I'd prefer being able to hold right click to drag the map around.
Blog||Tumblr|Steam|Twitter|FFXIV|Twitch|YouTube|Podcast|PSN|XBL|DarkZero
SniperGuyGaming on PSN / SniperGuy710 on Xbone Live
Also being able to say "go back to mining, slave!" after building automatically is nice too.
Anyone else accidently have all their SCVs run into the CC once at the start of their first 3 games because they kept accidently clicking that button instead of waypoint?
Troop placement and movement mid fight make a huge difference. That's what we call "micro". To really see it in action, do the first Terran challenge, and on the Hellion/Zergling part, try not to lose any Hellions. Yes, it's possible, you just have to get good at moving them around, and positioning them such that each fire blast hits as many zerglings as possible. Get really good at Attack-Move and Stop as well, as those are huge micro devices.
Yes, you should absolutely have your command centers waypoint set to it's mineral patch unless you have a specific reason to have it elsewhere. Then all newly created SCV's will go mine, and to top it off, they will mine intelligently and spread themselves out across the crystals for maximum throughput.
e: To expound on this. The auto worker waypoint is great, but very early game, you should control the waypoint to be on empty, or under utilized, patches yourself. The "smart" mineral algorithm is good, but it takes about half a second for your SCV to realize it's on an over utilized crystal and to move itself. If you do this yourself early game, you can buy yourself precious seconds.
When attacking clumping or not clumping is very situational and really depends on what you are facing. Your zealots vs. a swarm of zergling? You want to clump so each zealot is attacked by the fewest zerglings possible. With Templar, Collossi, Tanks or Infestors in play you want to be spread out to avoid thier area effects. Most of the time when you get to huge masses of units though you will have them in a ball out of convenience unless you have absurd clicking skills.
* Unless your ranged unit is stalkers, then you you might as well blink surround the opponent because it's fun and hilarious.
In other news, I've been clawing my way up my bronze division, now in 7th and I feel like I'm actually getting better.
Yeah, VR might be fragile, but if they get a charge up before the cavalry gets there, you are SCREWED. VR's can't outrange turrents/spore colonies can they?
I am a freaking nerd.
Immortals. They blast through Marauders, and Marauders do more than ten damage, thus bringing the Immortal Hardened Shell in to effect.
No, VR's are only range 6.
edit: plus then if he sees his bio build isn't working and tries to transfer into mech you have a good counter to siege tanks, too
Cool, thanks. Probably faster to get those too than to wait for the charge upgrade.
Not shocking. With upgrades and blink, Stalkers are easily the best pre-tier-2 unit in the game, and one of the few that stays relevant and useful all the way to late game.
e: Hydralisks would be the other unit in this category, though I'm not sure if Hydras are considered tier 2 or not. I guess they are tier 1.5 like stalkers, since they don't require a lair?
e2: They do require a lair, doh. You can tell I don't play Zerg much.
Woops. Yah, then what I said is certainly true. Stalkers are the best pre-tier 2 unit in the game.
Didn't someone figure out that there is actually no difference at all between manually doing it and letting it sort itself out?
If they did, they didn't tell me, or all the pro players that do it and recommend you do it to (Day[9] being at the top of the list).
SniperGuyGaming on PSN / SniperGuy710 on Xbone Live
SniperGuyGaming on PSN / SniperGuy710 on Xbone Live
You will really love shift-clicking when you realize it's "smart", and will generally do what you think it should do in spell cast cases. For instance, shift-blink some stalkers across a ravine. If there is not room for all the stalkers, the first group will blink, then move out of the way, and then the second group will blink over.
3 is the optimal.
He used to talk about how good splitting was too until the same thing happened....no difference. All it gets you is a chance to fuck it up. Tryin to find link for you.