Questions: How do you know what rank/rating the people playing against you are?
Awesome Wall of Text Email I sent my family about my first Starcraft II online experience:
5 placement matches. I won the first 2 by rushing DTs. First guy was good micro wise, but he was rushing void rays. Next guy I rush DTs, but he’s pretty decent and gets some cannons up. Then he rushes my base with tons of crap and kills my natural expansion. But then he doesn’t watch them, and I lure most of his stalkers up my ramp and my cannons and zealots kill them. So, then, I have no idea what to build, so I build 3 void rays. HOLY CRAP these things are ownage. They shoot a laser beam at a target, and the longer they shoot at the target, the more damage they do. I run them down and straight up just destroy his nexus. I end up winning the next game as well. So Im 4-0 in the freaking placement and getting really worried. I kinda want to lose the next game so I get put in Gold instead of Platinum. I played against this Zerg that was just ridiculously better than me. He scouted me with his overlord, moved his overlord out of my base 3 secs before I got a stalker, and then got a crapton of hydras and made a nydus worm in my base to send them through. I got straight up owned.
And then what do I see? Congratulations! You have been placed in the Platinum league. Remember, the leagues go Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond and you have to earn your way into the Diamond league by winning in Platinum. Ive read that it takes like 10 losses in a row to move down a league. So I figure screw it, Ill start my losing streak now to get moved down to Gold. The next two guys I played, I was like “Holy crap, these guys are good.” The first guy just wiped the floor with me. It wasn’t even close. I tried to get void rays against his zerg and it was just ugly.
2nd game…Wow. Most amazing game ever. I rushed DTs just as he stalker rushed me. I managed to get my DTs and kill 10 or so probes, he brings his army back and kills my DTs. He then brings his huge army to my base as Im trying to get cannons up on my ramp. He kills some units, but has to back away. But he’s got map control and observers, so I cant expand. I get a probe out, so now I know that he is expanding. Somehow I managed to cannon up enough to get to my expand right as I ran out of minerals at my expansion. (BTW I had forgotten how AWESOME starcraft was with economy. Mining out of 1 base? You are SCREWED and going to run out of money so fast) I figure he’s got another expand now and is mining out of 2 bases to my 1. Occasionaly I send a DT out to the Yellow minerals to make sure he’s not at those. I build a couple more void rays, but he’s got a stalker army…so Im like hmm, what to get. Why the hell not. I go Carriers. Then I notice at my expansion that I can build a mothership. So I build a freaking mothership as well. A mothership is like an arbiter. It has recall, and a warp gate ability that is kinda like statis field. It pulls a bunch of units into a void, and then 10 seconds later they all pop back out of the void. However, it costs 100 energy. So right as I get my mothership, he attacks my expand. I manage to hold him off with my cannons and mothership. I then start freaking leapfrogging cannons to the next expand. He shows up at the next expand. My entire army consist of 4 carriers, 1 void ray, 1 mothership, and like 5 zeals. He’s got stalkers and immortals and zeals and void rays. I figure im screwed, but im caught out at the expand, so time for a battle. I use warp gate from the mothership and manage to get almost exactly half his army. This is perfect. My army wipes out his half, and then the other half shows back up from the warp gate and I wipe those out. All that’s left is my 4 carriers. I send those toward his base, and find his starports and cybercore. Kill both and he says gg. I freaking won. I ended up get 33 “points” for it, so Im now 67 out of 100 on my platinum ladder.
Eventually you'll sort of be able to guess while in the game though. I notice that gold and below tend to hate moving out, and tend to get into this "Turtle up -> Army of doom -> 1a -> Win" mentality, for instance, where in plat you'll see much more harassment and little scouting pushes and whatnot.
Yeah, I can see that. One of the games I had, I had a hard time believing that it was another person playing me and not just a computer on easy difficulty. I guess i just expected that Gold players would be better. I mean, the divisions should be spread somewhat like this right
So by getting placed in Plat, you are already better than 60% of the people playing? I dont even know the entire Protoss Tech Tree or anything outside of what is covered in the campaign.
I mean, in my first match I tried to chronoboost a warping in pylon to get it to build faster....
can any toss player tell me what the point is of building 2 gateways, but then voidray/phoenixing anyway?
To have options and a way to get out more units quickly? Gates are cheap and if you are rushing air, you will probably be gas locked as opposed to mineral locked. (Im just going by SC1)
I think the system just needs time to balance itself.
you can hardly say whether a person deserves to be in "platinum" after only 20 games.
yet placement is after 5.
Building two gateways is usually for early game forces to stay alive while teching or keep up the pressure on your opponents. Often once my economy spins up I have nothing to spend on except more buildings, and if I'm going for ships I'll be floating way more minerals than gas.
Building two gateways is usually for early game forces to stay alive while teching or keep up the pressure on your opponents. Often once my economy spins up I have nothing to spend on except more buildings, and if I'm going for ships I'll be floating way more minerals than gas.
Yeah, if I ever have more than like 300 minerals (unless im expanding) I just drop a gateway even if I don't need it at the moment. Being able to warp in an army quickly can really save you or come in handy depending on how the game goes.
can any toss player tell me what the point is of building 2 gateways, but then voidray/phoenixing anyway?
Void rays an phoenixes are pretty bad all alone, need some support for them.
And well 2 gates+stargate+tech is what one well saturated base can support, otherwise you get resource buildup.
this was desert oasis and the voidray phoenixes were his rush force.
I just don't see the point in building a 2nd gateway, it couldnt have been a fakeout as my ovi was oos..
the more i play the more i'm loving infestors.. he had like 40 probes in one base, tried to escape as my force hit him, fungaled!
can any toss player tell me what the point is of building 2 gateways, but then voidray/phoenixing anyway?
Void rays an phoenixes are pretty bad all alone, need some support for them.
And well 2 gates+stargate+tech is what one well saturated base can support, otherwise you get resource buildup.
this was desert oasis and the voidray phoenixes were his rush force.
I just don't see the point in building a 2nd gateway, it couldnt have been a fakeout as my ovi was oos..
the more i play the more i'm loving infestors.. he had like 40 probes in one base, tried to escape as my force hit him, fungaled!
2 Gateways is a *really* common build. They only cost 150 minerals, and can counter any early pressure effectively. Mid-late game, you should have 4-5 gateways just pumping units constantly (if you've expanded enough). You would be surprised how effective the gateway units are especially when they are upgraded at the forge (or double forge if you know what you're doing). Because all the tech units are extremely gas intensive, you'll end up with a lot of extra minerals. converted into zealots, and suddenly you have a ground army.
whoo ranked up into silver
at the same time fell in love with toss who I'm going to main from now on because its a lot more fun than bioball all the time
Basically, a single fully saturated base can support 3 production buildings and tech or 4 production buildings. At least for Toss.
Not necessarily. I can pretty easily go 4 warpgate with 1 robo if I'm not going for early upgrades, and toss on 2 more warpgates and start upgrading when I grab my expo without ever really feeling like I'm hurting economically.
can any toss player tell me what the point is of building 2 gateways, but then voidray/phoenixing anyway?
Void rays an phoenixes are pretty bad all alone, need some support for them.
And well 2 gates+stargate+tech is what one well saturated base can support, otherwise you get resource buildup.
this was desert oasis and the voidray phoenixes were his rush force.
I just don't see the point in building a 2nd gateway, it couldnt have been a fakeout as my ovi was oos..
the more i play the more i'm loving infestors.. he had like 40 probes in one base, tried to escape as my force hit him, fungaled!
Basically, you have enough resources to get a second gateway when producing from gateway+stargate. So no reason not to, ever. Unless you are expanding, which is really dangerous against a zerg on DO.
So my 2s is silver, my 3s gold. I'm afraid of touching singles, as, well, my 2s partner is platinum, and I'm bringin him down.
I just got out of a 1 1/4 hour long 2v2. Every mineral on the map were mined except for the central high yield, and I spend the last 6 minutes with 12 scvs and a medivac.
Man, what a weird evening. Had a terrible game against a Terran where I scouted his banshees, built an observer to spot them, immediately forgot I had scouted banshees, sent my observer away to look for hidden expos, had my base exploded by invisible banshees. Second game I void rushed a Zerg on Desert Oasis and promptly got promoted to platinum. o_O
Basically, a single fully saturated base can support 3 production buildings and tech or 4 production buildings. At least for Toss.
Not necessarily. I can pretty easily go 4 warpgate with 1 robo if I'm not going for early upgrades, and toss on 2 more warpgates and start upgrading when I grab my expo without ever really feeling like I'm hurting economically.
I tend to use more gates and utilize them at under 100%. Warping in 6 zealots or stalkers on-demand at any base is really useful.
Basically, a single fully saturated base can support 3 production buildings and tech or 4 production buildings. At least for Toss.
Not necessarily. I can pretty easily go 4 warpgate with 1 robo if I'm not going for early upgrades, and toss on 2 more warpgates and start upgrading when I grab my expo without ever really feeling like I'm hurting economically.
I tend to use more gates and utilize them at under 100%. Warping in 6 zealots or stalkers on-demand at any base is really useful.
True, but one could argue that 4 gates used at 100% allows for a much more stable push. Also, if we're talking about multiple bases, as I said, I tack on more gates with every expo. I generally follow day9's rule of 2 more warpgates per new expo, after the initial 4. Seems to generally work pretty well for me.
I mean, if you are leaving 6 of your, say, 12 warpgates unused in case of an attack, and, say, warp in 6 dudes for your army, get attacked, and plan to warp in 6 into your expo to defend it, that means you were just able to warp in 12 units at once. Unless you're covering a shit ton of bases (ie you already won), if you have that kind of money you're sitting on, that just means your macro is slipping.
I like to build really big gateways out of lots of regular sized gateways, then turn them to warp gates.
Then the warp prism comes
I always wanted to try an Immortal drop while secretly warping in dark templars. Devastating.
Fuck secret, 2 immortals and ten zealots in their mineral line is devastating when you can do it.
If you have a second prism ready and do it to their expansion like 20 seconds later, its even worse
Edit: I don't think I've ever allowed myself to ever actually get 10 warp gates, but I'd love to some day. Did a game earlier where we just had on our team nothing but infestors and pheonixes that was the most hilarious victory ever
I'm so paranoid about detection now. I used to always be winning and then get DT'd or something.
If you're in the winning position, you really need to, at some point, stop and think "what could my opponent do to win this game?" and then stop him from doing it. I mean, DT's aren't hard to stop. Put a cannon in your choke. Get one observer. But if you don't do those things, then you're asking for it pretty hard.
Ok I am doing a lot better than I would have predicted when I bought this game, getting lots of nice winstreaks. That being said, I just had to facepalm against another Terran Opponent. First of all, he named himself JimRaynor, so I was suspicious to some sort of rushy tactic (he sent reapers, twice!). So the game goes on, i defend his rushes, send out some cloaked banshees, mess up and get them killed. Figure I am boned so I start to expand and place siege tanks around the edge of my base.
I defend his push of tank/rine/rauder and push back out with my own tank/viking force. I siege up right below his base so I can snipe some of his tanks and place my vikings on his ridge, wiping out a good 5 or 6 clumped tanks and smashing his expo. The following conversation ensued:
Him: "Wtf dude, I had the high ground how did you do that (keep in mind this guy was in platinum with 38 wins under his belt)"
Me: I don't know Obi Wan, you tell me"
Him: "U suck"
He gg's.
Moral(s) of the story is/are this, learn vision mechanics, and yay I got to reference Star Wars in a match!
I'm so paranoid about detection now. I used to always be winning and then get DT'd or something.
If you're in the winning position, you really need to, at some point, stop and think "what could my opponent do to win this game?" and then stop him from doing it. I mean, DT's aren't hard to stop. Put a cannon in your choke. Get one observer. But if you don't do those things, then you're asking for it pretty hard.
That's definitely great advice. I would add that utilizing your scouting units to continue that train of thought will help immensily.
Alright so I want to learn how to play SC2 online and not get raped through the pants every time like I used to in SC1/BW. I think back then I had like a 10/150 record. I want to know where I should study on how to get better before I start practicing in-game. I've been watching a lot of games, but I'm mostly looking for something written up.
Things I know from previous experience/single player:
-I know to almost never stop building probes/scvs (I never play Zerg, they confuse me too much)
-I scout early and often
-I use control groups, including hotkeying my buildings so I can build units mid-fight. Though I could use some pointers on how to break up control groups when I have a diverse troop mix, like if I want to be able to use sentry/templar abilities quickly while still controlling most of my army.
-When I decide what unit I'll need a lot of, I know to build 2 of the relevant building
-I more or less have the unit-counters memorized, at least the ones they straight up tell you from the in-game help.
-I personally think I'm pretty decent at micro, with the exception of using a lot of abilities from different units in rapid succession, as I mentioned above.
-I have read the newbie guide in the OP.
Things I really need to learn:
-Build orders. I'm pretty much in the habit of building my first barracks/pylon/whatever "whenever it feels right", which I know is wrong. I don't know when you're "supposed" to build these things.
-When to expand. In SC1, I would almost always either do it too early and get wiped out, or too late and get outpaced.
-Walling. When I watch matches I see a lot of really elegant walls being built, but the videos don't really focus on them enough for me the commit them to memory. Basically the only wall I have memorized is the Pylon/Gateway/Zealot at the top of a ramp.
-The most common strategies used by each race. I haven't played SC2 online at all yet (I played through the campaign on my friend's account and I'm buying my own copy later this week), so I don't know what's popular outside of the few games I've been watching online, which are mostly pros. For the moment, I don't need to know what the pros build, I need to know what Joe Average builds with each race and pointers on how to best counter it.
-Tips on how to be faster and more omnipresent. I have a habit of getting overly committed to a fight and not paying attention to other places on the map, I need to stop doing that.
If anyone has some reading material for the latter points, I would greatly appreciate it. I'm slowly learning through osmosis with these videos, but I feel that reading the reasoning behind the strategies would help me a lot more.
Posts
Awesome Wall of Text Email I sent my family about my first Starcraft II online experience:
5 placement matches. I won the first 2 by rushing DTs. First guy was good micro wise, but he was rushing void rays. Next guy I rush DTs, but he’s pretty decent and gets some cannons up. Then he rushes my base with tons of crap and kills my natural expansion. But then he doesn’t watch them, and I lure most of his stalkers up my ramp and my cannons and zealots kill them. So, then, I have no idea what to build, so I build 3 void rays. HOLY CRAP these things are ownage. They shoot a laser beam at a target, and the longer they shoot at the target, the more damage they do. I run them down and straight up just destroy his nexus. I end up winning the next game as well. So Im 4-0 in the freaking placement and getting really worried. I kinda want to lose the next game so I get put in Gold instead of Platinum. I played against this Zerg that was just ridiculously better than me. He scouted me with his overlord, moved his overlord out of my base 3 secs before I got a stalker, and then got a crapton of hydras and made a nydus worm in my base to send them through. I got straight up owned.
And then what do I see? Congratulations! You have been placed in the Platinum league. Remember, the leagues go Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond and you have to earn your way into the Diamond league by winning in Platinum. Ive read that it takes like 10 losses in a row to move down a league. So I figure screw it, Ill start my losing streak now to get moved down to Gold. The next two guys I played, I was like “Holy crap, these guys are good.” The first guy just wiped the floor with me. It wasn’t even close. I tried to get void rays against his zerg and it was just ugly.
2nd game…Wow. Most amazing game ever. I rushed DTs just as he stalker rushed me. I managed to get my DTs and kill 10 or so probes, he brings his army back and kills my DTs. He then brings his huge army to my base as Im trying to get cannons up on my ramp. He kills some units, but has to back away. But he’s got map control and observers, so I cant expand. I get a probe out, so now I know that he is expanding. Somehow I managed to cannon up enough to get to my expand right as I ran out of minerals at my expansion. (BTW I had forgotten how AWESOME starcraft was with economy. Mining out of 1 base? You are SCREWED and going to run out of money so fast) I figure he’s got another expand now and is mining out of 2 bases to my 1. Occasionaly I send a DT out to the Yellow minerals to make sure he’s not at those. I build a couple more void rays, but he’s got a stalker army…so Im like hmm, what to get. Why the hell not. I go Carriers. Then I notice at my expansion that I can build a mothership. So I build a freaking mothership as well. A mothership is like an arbiter. It has recall, and a warp gate ability that is kinda like statis field. It pulls a bunch of units into a void, and then 10 seconds later they all pop back out of the void. However, it costs 100 energy. So right as I get my mothership, he attacks my expand. I manage to hold him off with my cannons and mothership. I then start freaking leapfrogging cannons to the next expand. He shows up at the next expand. My entire army consist of 4 carriers, 1 void ray, 1 mothership, and like 5 zeals. He’s got stalkers and immortals and zeals and void rays. I figure im screwed, but im caught out at the expand, so time for a battle. I use warp gate from the mothership and manage to get almost exactly half his army. This is perfect. My army wipes out his half, and then the other half shows back up from the warp gate and I wipe those out. All that’s left is my 4 carriers. I send those toward his base, and find his starports and cybercore. Kill both and he says gg. I freaking won. I ended up get 33 “points” for it, so Im now 67 out of 100 on my platinum ladder.
Eventually you'll sort of be able to guess while in the game though. I notice that gold and below tend to hate moving out, and tend to get into this "Turtle up -> Army of doom -> 1a -> Win" mentality, for instance, where in plat you'll see much more harassment and little scouting pushes and whatnot.
0- 20% = Bronze
20 - 40% = Silver
40 - 60% = Gold
60 - 80% = Platinum
80 - 100% = Diamond
So by getting placed in Plat, you are already better than 60% of the people playing? I dont even know the entire Protoss Tech Tree or anything outside of what is covered in the campaign.
I mean, in my first match I tried to chronoboost a warping in pylon to get it to build faster....
To have options and a way to get out more units quickly? Gates are cheap and if you are rushing air, you will probably be gas locked as opposed to mineral locked. (Im just going by SC1)
you will probably have extra minerals for zealots, but it could just be a fake out
you can hardly say whether a person deserves to be in "platinum" after only 20 games.
yet placement is after 5.
I still try that now and then, juuuuust to see.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/51313-1v1-terran-delta-quadrant
Void rays an phoenixes are pretty bad all alone, need some support for them.
And well 2 gates+stargate+tech is what one well saturated base can support, otherwise you get resource buildup.
Yeah, if I ever have more than like 300 minerals (unless im expanding) I just drop a gateway even if I don't need it at the moment. Being able to warp in an army quickly can really save you or come in handy depending on how the game goes.
this was desert oasis and the voidray phoenixes were his rush force.
I just don't see the point in building a 2nd gateway, it couldnt have been a fakeout as my ovi was oos..
the more i play the more i'm loving infestors.. he had like 40 probes in one base, tried to escape as my force hit him, fungaled!
2 Gateways is a *really* common build. They only cost 150 minerals, and can counter any early pressure effectively. Mid-late game, you should have 4-5 gateways just pumping units constantly (if you've expanded enough). You would be surprised how effective the gateway units are especially when they are upgraded at the forge (or double forge if you know what you're doing). Because all the tech units are extremely gas intensive, you'll end up with a lot of extra minerals. converted into zealots, and suddenly you have a ground army.
Joe's Stream.
at the same time fell in love with toss who I'm going to main from now on because its a lot more fun than bioball all the time
Not necessarily. I can pretty easily go 4 warpgate with 1 robo if I'm not going for early upgrades, and toss on 2 more warpgates and start upgrading when I grab my expo without ever really feeling like I'm hurting economically.
Basically, you have enough resources to get a second gateway when producing from gateway+stargate. So no reason not to, ever. Unless you are expanding, which is really dangerous against a zerg on DO.
iCCup is streaming a special map tourney, only using new/non-Blizzard maps made by the iCCup guys (prodiG, etc):
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iccup-tv/v3
At least we can spam zealots and more warpgates. Nothing like having 10+ warpgates when someone tries to drop you.
whenever I play zerg I have a billion minerals lying around. I'm bad at zerg
I just got out of a 1 1/4 hour long 2v2. Every mineral on the map were mined except for the central high yield, and I spend the last 6 minutes with 12 scvs and a medivac.
Winning due to starvation is not fun.
I tend to use more gates and utilize them at under 100%. Warping in 6 zealots or stalkers on-demand at any base is really useful.
Then the warp prism comes
I always wanted to try an Immortal drop while secretly warping in dark templars. Devastating.
True, but one could argue that 4 gates used at 100% allows for a much more stable push. Also, if we're talking about multiple bases, as I said, I tack on more gates with every expo. I generally follow day9's rule of 2 more warpgates per new expo, after the initial 4. Seems to generally work pretty well for me.
I mean, if you are leaving 6 of your, say, 12 warpgates unused in case of an attack, and, say, warp in 6 dudes for your army, get attacked, and plan to warp in 6 into your expo to defend it, that means you were just able to warp in 12 units at once. Unless you're covering a shit ton of bases (ie you already won), if you have that kind of money you're sitting on, that just means your macro is slipping.
I FE, he goes mass stalkers
I hold on for a while but he finally overruns my base when he gets phoenixes to lift my collosi
Then I kill his army and base with dark templar and he rage quits
Yessssss that's what you get for not getting detection "Bluntcraft"
the only one i know is that one you guys are always talking about where you put down lots of spine crawlers then tech to hydra.
I thought Colossi were massive. Couldn't be lifted.
Fuck secret, 2 immortals and ten zealots in their mineral line is devastating when you can do it.
If you have a second prism ready and do it to their expansion like 20 seconds later, its even worse
Edit: I don't think I've ever allowed myself to ever actually get 10 warp gates, but I'd love to some day. Did a game earlier where we just had on our team nothing but infestors and pheonixes that was the most hilarious victory ever
I'm a retard. I meant immortals.
If you're in the winning position, you really need to, at some point, stop and think "what could my opponent do to win this game?" and then stop him from doing it. I mean, DT's aren't hard to stop. Put a cannon in your choke. Get one observer. But if you don't do those things, then you're asking for it pretty hard.
I defend his push of tank/rine/rauder and push back out with my own tank/viking force. I siege up right below his base so I can snipe some of his tanks and place my vikings on his ridge, wiping out a good 5 or 6 clumped tanks and smashing his expo. The following conversation ensued:
Him: "Wtf dude, I had the high ground how did you do that (keep in mind this guy was in platinum with 38 wins under his belt)"
Me: I don't know Obi Wan, you tell me"
Him: "U suck"
He gg's.
Moral(s) of the story is/are this, learn vision mechanics, and yay I got to reference Star Wars in a match!
SCII: Sain.437
wait until you lose your massive macro army to a chokepoint with 2 cannons and 2 high templar.
Joe's Stream.
That's definitely great advice. I would add that utilizing your scouting units to continue that train of thought will help immensily.
Things I know from previous experience/single player:
-I know to almost never stop building probes/scvs (I never play Zerg, they confuse me too much)
-I scout early and often
-I use control groups, including hotkeying my buildings so I can build units mid-fight. Though I could use some pointers on how to break up control groups when I have a diverse troop mix, like if I want to be able to use sentry/templar abilities quickly while still controlling most of my army.
-When I decide what unit I'll need a lot of, I know to build 2 of the relevant building
-I more or less have the unit-counters memorized, at least the ones they straight up tell you from the in-game help.
-I personally think I'm pretty decent at micro, with the exception of using a lot of abilities from different units in rapid succession, as I mentioned above.
-I have read the newbie guide in the OP.
Things I really need to learn:
-Build orders. I'm pretty much in the habit of building my first barracks/pylon/whatever "whenever it feels right", which I know is wrong. I don't know when you're "supposed" to build these things.
-When to expand. In SC1, I would almost always either do it too early and get wiped out, or too late and get outpaced.
-Walling. When I watch matches I see a lot of really elegant walls being built, but the videos don't really focus on them enough for me the commit them to memory. Basically the only wall I have memorized is the Pylon/Gateway/Zealot at the top of a ramp.
-The most common strategies used by each race. I haven't played SC2 online at all yet (I played through the campaign on my friend's account and I'm buying my own copy later this week), so I don't know what's popular outside of the few games I've been watching online, which are mostly pros. For the moment, I don't need to know what the pros build, I need to know what Joe Average builds with each race and pointers on how to best counter it.
-Tips on how to be faster and more omnipresent. I have a habit of getting overly committed to a fight and not paying attention to other places on the map, I need to stop doing that.
If anyone has some reading material for the latter points, I would greatly appreciate it. I'm slowly learning through osmosis with these videos, but I feel that reading the reasoning behind the strategies would help me a lot more.
Thanks.