The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
Please vote in the Forum Structure Poll. Polling will close at 2PM EST on January 21, 2025.
[Starcraft 2] THIS THREAD IS DEAD! POST IN THE NEW ONE!
I've seen a lot of people do the spine push with a Nydus in the main, it's not something that should work, but it does anyways. I'd assume a burrow roach play or Infestor bust would be pretty good since you're pretty much restricted to 2 base.
Nydus worm + spine push seems like all-in overkill to me especially since both are defendable if you have an inkling that they are coming coupled with decent crisis management.
(Or if you bank 3k/1k while defending and then proceed to dump it all into DTs and 10 gates. >_<)
Kambing on
@TwitchTV, @Youtube: master-level zerg ladder/customs, commentary, and random miscellany.
0
Tkenpost-CSL January 2012 Partycraft 6th Place WinnerRegistered Userregular
I've seen a lot of people do the spine push with a Nydus in the main, it's not something that should work, but it does anyways. I'd assume a burrow roach play or Infestor bust would be pretty good since you're pretty much restricted to 2 base.
Nydus worm + spine push seems like all-in overkill to me especially since both are defendable if you have an inkling that they are coming coupled with decent crisis management.
(Or if you bank 3k/1k while defending and then proceed to dump it all into DTs and 10 gates. >_<)
I'd agree following up the spine push with a Nydus is all-in, especially if it's the very next use of 200 gas after the Lair. But I don't think that the spine push by itself is easily defended or all-in. Assuming that the initial lings plus Queen can deny scouting of the Lair, and that the Overlord spews the intial creep outside of vision of the wall, there's not much chance of seeing it coming in time. The spines don't win the game by any means, but they should be able to kill each and every building that is a hex in front of a cannon, and ideally force an overreaction (cutting probes, reinforcing the wall, etc). I think it's a tactic that needs a lot more testing if anyone wants to play some games against it.
You should also be able to magic box the tempest. Not as easy as a thor, may need a bigger box.
35 dmg / shot to ground at a good rate is pretty damn good. Banshee good.
Range will drive just how good.
Apparently the AoE of the AtA attack is about the size of a psi storm. So in a set of magic-boxed mutas, I think something like nine would get hit by each shot? As far as a 'bigger box,' I could be wrong, but I didn't think that was how the technique worked; I thought there was an established distance from each other that magic-boxed mutas got. In any case, psi-storm sized AoE is pretty damn big.
Generalísimo de Fuerzas Armadas de la República Argentina
I feel the point of the Tempest was to make an anti-Muta unit. So I doubt magic boxing will be that effective.
Hopefully it won't be shit at countering the unit it's meant to counter, like the Thor.
Seriously, Thors are awful against mutas. Please stop building them
But seriously, In a straight up fight, Mutas will beat Thors, but Mutas will do so much less damage to everything if you can't ball up when you're harassing.
TannerMS on
0
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Thors are good at forcing you to keep Mutas spread out instead of clumped out, which makes it harder for them to dart in and snipe tanks, and increases the risk that you'll get hit by a big Thor shot.
You should also be able to magic box the tempest. Not as easy as a thor, may need a bigger box.
35 dmg / shot to ground at a good rate is pretty damn good. Banshee good.
Range will drive just how good.
I do not want to have to throw more monies into corruptors My poor ground army is already shrinking enough as it is with having to get faceraped by deathball forcefielded cololsus armies
I feel the point of the Tempest was to make an anti-Muta unit. So I doubt magic boxing will be that effective.
Hopefully it won't be shit at countering the unit it's meant to counter, like the Thor.
Protoss are already amazing at countering mutas and have easier tech to do it that has more purposes than just killing mutas
and Thors are bad at countering Mutas? Wait I don't generally build them but the pros don't seem to have any trouble repelling infinite mutas with one thor (until the zerg is doing an all in engagement)
Thors are pretty much walking turrets (against Mutas, anyway). They have their purpose, but it's still funny to see Thors get magic boxed to death when they are supposed to be the hard counter to Mutas.
Most TvZs the marine ball is what actually kills the Mutas, Thors/Turrets just provide zoning.
P10 on
Shameful pursuits and utterly stupid opinions
0
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I see where you're coming from, but I disagree. Just from the perspective of locking down minerals, it isn't as powerful as the other race's harass. But more importantly it has the ability to phase out buildings, which I think is the more powerful ability of the two. It can significantly delay an opponent's tech, which in turn opens up a lot of potential aggressive timings for the Protoss. This is a harsh punishment and one that the opponent will need to do everything they can to prevent. You say that the Oracle doesn't require much strategy or commitment, but I don't see why. It's more expensive than a banshee and more gas heavy than a hellion drop, so there is clearly an investment and risk to using it. I fail to see how getting an oracle into a base or mineral line is any less strategic than getting a hellion or banshee there.
The distinction is that hellions/banshees/mutalisks take time to do their job, and that adds a lot of strategic and tactical complexity. You can sneak one Banshee in and attack some workers, but they take two shots each, so if there's a defensive force anywhere nearby, you might get very few kills. Invest in two banshees instead of one and those worker kills become drastically easier. Invest in one or two more than that and they can work faster still, and even kill light defenses by themselves. The amount of damage they do is directly proportional to how much you choose to invest in them and how risky you're willing to get in terms of when you go in and how long you try to stick around.
The Oracle doesn't do this. As soon as you're in range, it looks like you just hit the button, instantly seal off the minerals, and leave. Larger amounts of Oracles probably won't do this much better than one. Time isn't a factor. Micro and grappling for good positions relative to the defenders doesn't happen. Unless a line of marines (for example) is already there to repel the oracle, the only "battle" is between the Terran player and an inert shield, not the Terran and the Protoss. The unit doesn't bring about interesting conflict between players anywhere near as well as other harassment units. I'm not saying that Protoss shouldn't be given new harassment options, just that the Oracle doesn't strike me as a well-designed way of going about it.
Arc shield is one of the new Nexus abilities, ala the photon cannon one. The arc shield will only deter very early game timings because it isn't particularly strong, and like I said in my last post the Protoss really need this early survivability to remain on even economic footing with Terran and Zerg. Like Vari mentioned, mass recall will actually allow Protoss to be more aggressive, and it will open up a lot of cool strategies. If anything it will deter the deathball strategy; the reason that Protoss are forced to form a deathball most of the time is because their army isn't very strong without a specific unit composition and not mobile enough to escape from bad engagements. But now they can be aggressive, harass with their army and poke without the constant risk of losing it. You mention there being no risk for a Protoss poking, but the 75 energy itself is an investment. Every time they use it, they are either slowing down their tech or production quite significantly.
Oh, I confused Arc Shield with Entomb or whatever the Oracle's mineral-shield is called. But with regards to Recall, it does let the Protoss toy around with aggressive tactics more freely, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but I still feel that it takes a lot of the strategic decision-making out of aggression, which doesn't sit right with me. I'd rather see new early-game units with mechanics that encourage taking risks with new aggressive strategies rather than making removing the risk and thus making Protoss aggressive by default. Recall just seems like kind of a lazy band-aid solution to the problem. I will admit that it's possible that I'm undervaluing Chronoboost to some degree, since I've never really played at a level where both players' macro is tight enough for it to be a really obvious gamechanger, but I still have to question whether it can compete with the huge amounts of pressure and map control you can leverage with Recall.
It will be interesting to see how much faster moving warhound ends up doing against mutas.
Also cheaper, faster to build, and less supply, I'm sure.
I didn't think to jot down their costs when I was at blizzcon, and now I can't remember them to see just exactly how they stack up against the thor. Looking around on the internet it's got less life than a thor (260 vs 400), and it's air splash against light is half (8x3 for the warhound, 12x4 for the thor). Not able to find costs and build times online right now. I'm sure someone jotted it down while playing at the con and it will surface eventually.
Edit: Having more than one oracle will definitely have a point. They have a limited energy pool and all their spells are awesome. The more you have the more frequently you can keep the minerals entombed or keep key buildings phased out, not to mention trying to keep multiple bases entombed at the same time. Though don't bother trying to entomb minerals by a planetary fortress :P
Edit 2: I factored in the bonus vs. light for warhounds but not for thors, durrhurr.
The new stuff looks like a flavor targeted selection of units more than a mechanically sound plan. Swarmy unit removed from toss, ability moved to Z. Building negation unit removed from Z, moved to P. T get robit men.
Thors rock muties when you're micro'ing your muties around trying to pick shit off cause the mutalisks are clumped up and one barrage hits _all_ of them-- which happens often when you're controlling them around their base or your army trying to snipe buildings, workers, tanks. But muties rock the shit out of thors when you magic box.
I feel the point of the Tempest was to make an anti-Muta unit. So I doubt magic boxing will be that effective.
Hopefully it won't be shit at countering the unit it's meant to counter, like the Thor.
Protoss are already amazing at countering mutas and have easier tech to do it that has more purposes than just killing mutas
and Thors are bad at countering Mutas? Wait I don't generally build them but the pros don't seem to have any trouble repelling infinite mutas with one thor (until the zerg is doing an all in engagement)
Protoss has nothing that is amazing at countering Mutas. Phoenixes vs Mutas only come out in favor of Phoenixes in relatively small numbers, because once you start massing Mutas they have relatively less overkill due to their bouncing attacks, whereas Phoenixes overkill the shit out of Mutas.
Stalkers are slow as balls compared to Mutas, even with blink, and they do relatively little damage against them again due to horrific overkill.
Archons will rarely get good hits against clumps of units and are generally too slow to catch up to Mutas and do any sort of damage.
Mutas move so fast that Storm doesn't do much damage.
Stalkers are *always* cost effective against mutas in a straight up engagement and archons are fine for preventing muta harass. Phoenixes work against mutas in the early and midgame.
I mean I guess I see the niche needing to be filled but really, mutas aren't good against carriers and I don't see toss building lots of those. The thing is, mutas can outrun the tempests too!
And as far as stalkers go, once you get up to 30 mutas or so, you can't micro better than mutas cause the clump means that the mutas will always have a better "concave".
Generalísimo de Fuerzas Armadas de la República Argentina
And as far as stalkers go, once you get up to 30 mutas or so, you can't micro better than mutas cause the clump means that the mutas will always have a better "concave".
If you clump all your stalkers up on a ledge and have no micro, and your macro is so bad that your army of stalkers honestly loses to his army of mutas.
I'm honestly not seeing how the tempest is any better than the archon at stopping against muta harass. It seems to me the tempest would be far better in concert with collosi (as it will invalidate huge numbers of vikings), but it's so high up the tech tree as to be almost not worthwhile.
Archons are not "fine" for preventing muta harass. They certainly help, but it is pretty trivial for zerg to magic box them at this point. Mutas are extremely fast and it's pretty easy to dart in and out and avoid archons. To be safe against mutas you need a lot of cannons or a bunch of stalkers or a few archons nearby.
Mass muta is also usually great as a main army composition for zerg, since they're often paired with a ton of zerglings. If you have too many zealots, the mutas tear apart your main army, and if you have too many stalkers, zerglings tear apart your main army. Protoss has nothing "great" to deal with mutas, they just have stuff that is sort of ok.
I always thought thors should splash the same way gryphons/dragons did in WC, hit main target, then cone splash. It would still let magic boxing work, but to a less extent.
I've seen a lot of people do the spine push with a Nydus in the main, it's not something that should work, but it does anyways. I'd assume a burrow roach play or Infestor bust would be pretty good since you're pretty much restricted to 2 base.
Nydus worm + spine push seems like all-in overkill to me especially since both are defendable if you have an inkling that they are coming coupled with decent crisis management.
(Or if you bank 3k/1k while defending and then proceed to dump it all into DTs and 10 gates. >_<)
I'd agree following up the spine push with a Nydus is all-in, especially if it's the very next use of 200 gas after the Lair. But I don't think that the spine push by itself is easily defended or all-in. Assuming that the initial lings plus Queen can deny scouting of the Lair, and that the Overlord spews the intial creep outside of vision of the wall, there's not much chance of seeing it coming in time. The spines don't win the game by any means, but they should be able to kill each and every building that is a hex in front of a cannon, and ideally force an overreaction (cutting probes, reinforcing the wall, etc). I think it's a tactic that needs a lot more testing if anyone wants to play some games against it.
Nah, spine push by itself isn't all-in. But it very much relies on being un-scouted or otherwise unanticipated because the counter is simply to float cannons in front of your wall to stop spines from constructing in range of your nexus.
@TwitchTV, @Youtube: master-level zerg ladder/customs, commentary, and random miscellany.
I think a lot of us are making the mistake of assuming that our traditional perceptions in terms of army composition/what game should 'feel' like will be even remotely viable. There's just too much we don't know.
On a pretty unrelated side note, a few friends and I are having a "Retro" (Pre-2000) LAN party this weekend. We've already cobbled together a good list of games to play (even if some of them are post 2000), but do you guys have any suggestions?
Here's what we've got so far:
Quake 1/2/3
Unreal tournament
Diablo 1
Delta Force 2
Age of Empires 2
Command and conquer: Red Alert 2
Worms 2
Starcraft: Brood War
Duke Nukem 3D (COOP!)
Hexen 2 Coop
Serious Sam
Wincerv
Soldat
I think a lot of us are making the mistake of assuming that our traditional perceptions in terms of army composition/what game should 'feel' like will be even remotely viable. There's just too much we don't know.
All due respect but I think this is an irrelevant notion.
"Being able to escape with your entire army from failed early and mid-game all-ins would be goddamn ridiculous" is something that I'm pretty comfortable saying regardless of however else the metagame changes/shifts/whatever based on new lategame units.
On a pretty unrelated side note, a few friends and I are having a "Retro" (Pre-2000) LAN party this weekend. We've already cobbled together a good list of games to play (even if some of them are post 2000), but do you guys have any suggestions?
Here's what we've got so far:
Quake 1/2/3
Unreal tournament
Diablo 1
Delta Force 2
Age of Empires 2
Command and conquer: Red Alert 2
Worms 2
Starcraft: Brood War
Duke Nukem 3D (COOP!)
Hexen 2 Coop
Serious Sam
Wincerv
Soldat
Counter Strike 1.6
Natural Selection
WarCraft 2 and 3 (2 being pre, 3 being post)
Battlefield 1942 (Desert Combat mod as well)
edit: forgot to add the greatest racing game of all time
Episode 1 Pod Racer
Side note, thank you for reminding me that Soldat is a thing that existed.
On a pretty unrelated side note, a few friends and I are having a "Retro" (Pre-2000) LAN party this weekend. We've already cobbled together a good list of games to play (even if some of them are post 2000), but do you guys have any suggestions?
Here's what we've got so far:
Quake 1/2/3
Unreal tournament
Diablo 1
Delta Force 2
Age of Empires 2
Command and conquer: Red Alert 2
Worms 2
Starcraft: Brood War
Duke Nukem 3D (COOP!)
Hexen 2 Coop
Serious Sam
Wincerv
Soldat
Counter Strike 1.6
Natural Selection
WarCraft 2 and 3 (2 being pre, 3 being post)
Battlefield 1942 (Desert Combat mod as well)
edit: forgot to add the greatest racing game of all time
Episode 1 Pod Racer
Side note, thank you for reminding me that Soldat is a thing that existed.
Half Life 1 (directional rocket launchers and scarab showdown in a giant kitchen FTW)
Hearts
Team Fortress Classic?
Shadow Warrior (NOT FOR KIDS!)
Tetrinet
I agree with Lemming that protoss has answers to mass muta, but that those answers just aren't super efficient.
It's borderline suicide to engage 1/4th my muta flock's cost worth of stimmed marines/thors/turrets. Takes more like 3/4th their cost of stalkers/phoenixes/archons before I'm too worried about just killing whatever he has.
Posts
Nydus worm + spine push seems like all-in overkill to me especially since both are defendable if you have an inkling that they are coming coupled with decent crisis management.
(Or if you bank 3k/1k while defending and then proceed to dump it all into DTs and 10 gates. >_<)
I'd agree following up the spine push with a Nydus is all-in, especially if it's the very next use of 200 gas after the Lair. But I don't think that the spine push by itself is easily defended or all-in. Assuming that the initial lings plus Queen can deny scouting of the Lair, and that the Overlord spews the intial creep outside of vision of the wall, there's not much chance of seeing it coming in time. The spines don't win the game by any means, but they should be able to kill each and every building that is a hex in front of a cannon, and ideally force an overreaction (cutting probes, reinforcing the wall, etc). I think it's a tactic that needs a lot more testing if anyone wants to play some games against it.
Apparently the AoE of the AtA attack is about the size of a psi storm. So in a set of magic-boxed mutas, I think something like nine would get hit by each shot? As far as a 'bigger box,' I could be wrong, but I didn't think that was how the technique worked; I thought there was an established distance from each other that magic-boxed mutas got. In any case, psi-storm sized AoE is pretty damn big.
Hopefully it won't be shit at countering the unit it's meant to counter, like the Thor.
Seriously, Thors are awful against mutas. Please stop building them
But seriously, In a straight up fight, Mutas will beat Thors, but Mutas will do so much less damage to everything if you can't ball up when you're harassing.
But they are not good at taking on Mutas solo.
I do not want to have to throw more monies into corruptors
B.net: Kusanku
Protoss are already amazing at countering mutas and have easier tech to do it that has more purposes than just killing mutas
and Thors are bad at countering Mutas? Wait I don't generally build them but the pros don't seem to have any trouble repelling infinite mutas with one thor (until the zerg is doing an all in engagement)
Most TvZs the marine ball is what actually kills the Mutas, Thors/Turrets just provide zoning.
Also cheaper, faster to build, and less supply, I'm sure.
The distinction is that hellions/banshees/mutalisks take time to do their job, and that adds a lot of strategic and tactical complexity. You can sneak one Banshee in and attack some workers, but they take two shots each, so if there's a defensive force anywhere nearby, you might get very few kills. Invest in two banshees instead of one and those worker kills become drastically easier. Invest in one or two more than that and they can work faster still, and even kill light defenses by themselves. The amount of damage they do is directly proportional to how much you choose to invest in them and how risky you're willing to get in terms of when you go in and how long you try to stick around.
The Oracle doesn't do this. As soon as you're in range, it looks like you just hit the button, instantly seal off the minerals, and leave. Larger amounts of Oracles probably won't do this much better than one. Time isn't a factor. Micro and grappling for good positions relative to the defenders doesn't happen. Unless a line of marines (for example) is already there to repel the oracle, the only "battle" is between the Terran player and an inert shield, not the Terran and the Protoss. The unit doesn't bring about interesting conflict between players anywhere near as well as other harassment units. I'm not saying that Protoss shouldn't be given new harassment options, just that the Oracle doesn't strike me as a well-designed way of going about it.
Oh, I confused Arc Shield with Entomb or whatever the Oracle's mineral-shield is called. But with regards to Recall, it does let the Protoss toy around with aggressive tactics more freely, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but I still feel that it takes a lot of the strategic decision-making out of aggression, which doesn't sit right with me. I'd rather see new early-game units with mechanics that encourage taking risks with new aggressive strategies rather than making removing the risk and thus making Protoss aggressive by default. Recall just seems like kind of a lazy band-aid solution to the problem. I will admit that it's possible that I'm undervaluing Chronoboost to some degree, since I've never really played at a level where both players' macro is tight enough for it to be a really obvious gamechanger, but I still have to question whether it can compete with the huge amounts of pressure and map control you can leverage with Recall.
I didn't think to jot down their costs when I was at blizzcon, and now I can't remember them to see just exactly how they stack up against the thor. Looking around on the internet it's got less life than a thor (260 vs 400), and it's air splash against light is half (8x3 for the warhound, 12x4 for the thor). Not able to find costs and build times online right now. I'm sure someone jotted it down while playing at the con and it will surface eventually.
Edit: Having more than one oracle will definitely have a point. They have a limited energy pool and all their spells are awesome. The more you have the more frequently you can keep the minerals entombed or keep key buildings phased out, not to mention trying to keep multiple bases entombed at the same time. Though don't bother trying to entomb minerals by a planetary fortress :P
Edit 2: I factored in the bonus vs. light for warhounds but not for thors, durrhurr.
B.net: Kusanku
Protoss has nothing that is amazing at countering Mutas. Phoenixes vs Mutas only come out in favor of Phoenixes in relatively small numbers, because once you start massing Mutas they have relatively less overkill due to their bouncing attacks, whereas Phoenixes overkill the shit out of Mutas.
Stalkers are slow as balls compared to Mutas, even with blink, and they do relatively little damage against them again due to horrific overkill.
Archons will rarely get good hits against clumps of units and are generally too slow to catch up to Mutas and do any sort of damage.
Mutas move so fast that Storm doesn't do much damage.
I mean I guess I see the niche needing to be filled but really, mutas aren't good against carriers and I don't see toss building lots of those. The thing is, mutas can outrun the tempests too!
Boom. I just solved Starcraft.
If you clump all your stalkers up on a ledge and have no micro, and your macro is so bad that your army of stalkers honestly loses to his army of mutas.
I'm honestly not seeing how the tempest is any better than the archon at stopping against muta harass. It seems to me the tempest would be far better in concert with collosi (as it will invalidate huge numbers of vikings), but it's so high up the tech tree as to be almost not worthwhile.
Mass muta is also usually great as a main army composition for zerg, since they're often paired with a ton of zerglings. If you have too many zealots, the mutas tear apart your main army, and if you have too many stalkers, zerglings tear apart your main army. Protoss has nothing "great" to deal with mutas, they just have stuff that is sort of ok.
Nah, spine push by itself isn't all-in. But it very much relies on being un-scouted or otherwise unanticipated because the counter is simply to float cannons in front of your wall to stop spines from constructing in range of your nexus.
Barf
Here's what we've got so far:
Unreal tournament
Diablo 1
Delta Force 2
Age of Empires 2
Command and conquer: Red Alert 2
Worms 2
Starcraft: Brood War
Duke Nukem 3D (COOP!)
Hexen 2 Coop
Serious Sam
Wincerv
Soldat
All due respect but I think this is an irrelevant notion.
"Being able to escape with your entire army from failed early and mid-game all-ins would be goddamn ridiculous" is something that I'm pretty comfortable saying regardless of however else the metagame changes/shifts/whatever based on new lategame units.
Counter Strike 1.6
Natural Selection
WarCraft 2 and 3 (2 being pre, 3 being post)
Battlefield 1942 (Desert Combat mod as well)
edit: forgot to add the greatest racing game of all time
Episode 1 Pod Racer
Side note, thank you for reminding me that Soldat is a thing that existed.
Also, re: Mass Recall: My gut says that it's not gonna be NEARLY as powerful as the Mothership's.
Half Life 1 (directional rocket launchers and scarab showdown in a giant kitchen FTW)
Hearts
Team Fortress Classic?
Shadow Warrior (NOT FOR KIDS!)
Tetrinet
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
As for PC, Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries. Super great. Literally the game that got me into gaming.
Oh and Tribes 2 of course.
B.net: Kusanku
It's borderline suicide to engage 1/4th my muta flock's cost worth of stimmed marines/thors/turrets. Takes more like 3/4th their cost of stalkers/phoenixes/archons before I'm too worried about just killing whatever he has.
M2:M is so awesome. I love that game. Very atmospheric campaign mode and fun combat.
Played Mechwarrior 4 a few years ago and had no idea how they made it so much less fun.