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Ajar 587. I'm always looking for new 2v2 and 3v3 partners.
I've already promised another friend I'd team up with him tonight, but other than that I'm definitely down to do some practice 1v1s or take on the world in 2v2.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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I know that I am nearing the middle/top of bronze, and am getting close to being promoted. About a third of my matches are against bottom to middle level silvers now. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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For a while I was getting hammered in silver, ranked 80th in my division, give or take, and with a 10-20 record. It started matching me against bronze players, and I went on a tear, going 7-3 over my next 10 games, including a streak of 6 victories. I went from 82nd to 65th.
After the 10th game, a loss in TvT to a bronze league player, it demoted me to bronze.
Now the long climb begins, I guess.
After that I'd had enough of 1v1, but fortunately Juxtapose was on and he was up for 2v2. We lost our first one, a ZTvPT to platinum league players in part due to our own terrible scouting -- we let them take a gold exp and hold it almost the entire game. We somehow just didn't see it.
The second game, ZTvPP, was much better. I scouted an early proxy pylon in Juxtapose's base, so we went marauder/roach and pushed back. We harassed both toss but ultimately pushed into the cannon guy's base. He held onto enough stuff to rebuild in his ally's natural, but we had them contained. Jux scouted rays from the other toss so I switched to hydras, which fended off the rays. The ray guy massed cannons at their choke, but I snuck roaches and hydras past to keep harassing. Ultimately the would-be cannon rusher dropped. Jux hit the other base with vikings and marines just as I was sending over corruptors so I could morph them into brood lords, but I didn't get to since the second toss hit the GG. A good game! Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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So right now, I'm trapped in a stalemate against another Terran player.
Both our buildings are flying.
He has no units, but I think he can build a marine. I have a marauder, and 3 medivacs. I really need to get one of them killed because I have enough resources to build one viking (I have one supply depot, and am maxed on supply).
I tried to get my marauder and my last SCV to kill each other simultaneously, but that didn't quite work out.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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terran stalemates are lol. I got stuck in one where I had two stalkers and a sentry, no probes, no cash, and they had a command center lurking off the sides of the cliff with SCV's in it.
Can't leave computer.
Must patrol all land.
Going nuts.
This goes on forever.
I come back from lunch. He snuck in a landing and made a barracks and six marines. But it is a BIG MAP. Stalkers pick off a marine, flee. pick off a marine, flee. barracks takes off but is red, blows up.
Welp, back to where we were, and I added a few new patrol points so it won't happen again.
This goes on forever.
a bajillion hours later he drops.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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There really should be some kind of system where the players can vote for a stalemate, and the game ends without awarding or deducting points.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I had not played pvp in about 3 weeks, and I got killed a few days ago. I lost 14 of 16, 12 of them in a row. I dropped almost 20 places in my ladder because of it.
I have climbed back about 14 of them now, but still...
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Zergling rush will definitely be more difficult to manage as Terran, but the bigger problem to me is the need for a factory in order to start the speed upgrade.
I can't see anybody attempting to reaper rush with that in place.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Since when does Terran ever have difficulty fending off a zergling rush?
I play random, so I'm familiar with holding off zergling rushes as all three races, and I have to say that Terran is BY FAR the easiest to fend off ling rushes with. If I scout an early pool as Terran, or even notice zerglings running across the map if my scout is late, there's still more than enough time to complete a wall off by starting construction on an early extra depot, and sending a couple scvs to repair, still staying ahead in economy because the zerg player sacrificed drones to get such an early pool.
Posts: 142 | Registered: Apr 2005
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If they're not going to restructure the reaper to be a later-tier, more durable unit, or significantly reduce the gas cost, they might as well just take them out of the game. They are only useful for rushes on the supply line. They then cease being used entirely.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Reapers were ridiculously good before the last patch's nerfs, and I think that this patch is designed to nerf them more in team games, where they are very powerful.
Now they are going to be recast as more of a counter attack unit that can quickly punish an opponent who has his army out of position by raiding expansions and sniping off workers.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2006
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They're a unit with a very, very limited window of opportunity whose primary usage is just to snipe low-tier players with rushes, in a very narrow window, on the mineral line. After this, in nearly all instances, they stop being made or used. The lack of their use increases to a significant degree as you move up the tiers.
I don't think I can qualify those as being the qualities of ridiculously good units ..
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Actually, the reason they got nerfed was because they broke TvZ at diamond level and above so much that if the zerg player survived the first 5 minutes of the game, he was so far behind economically that his opponent had to seriously screw up in order to lose. 5 rax reaper rushes were almost unstoppable at even the highest level of play.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2006
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I wouldn't doubt that this could have happened completely without me noticing since I'm never involved in any TvZ games.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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yep. new patch, otherwise know as caving in to whiners.
I lost 50% of my matches with zerg before, because of their insane ability to rush. Now their spires have their health increased by a third?
And the void rays 2nd stage of power in lowered by 30% or so? They are the ONLY advantage Prot player had, and it wasn't much of one. PLUS, the flux vanes speed increase was lowered almost by half.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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I enjoy playing protoss and I wanted Void Rays nerfed specifically so that I could actually use some other damn units.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:I enjoy playing protoss and I wanted Void Rays nerfed specifically so that I could actually use some other damn units.
Here here. I was so sick of seeing them used against me when I was playing PvP that I pretty much swore them off as part of my arsenal. The few matches I did mass void rays I won each time, but felt dirty doing it.
(Now I play random most times.)
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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On top of that, the whole system sucks now. I just won, decisively. Then, when HE surrendered, I lost points because the computer said I left the game.
After he surrendered, and I clicked on continue.
My void rays have always been countered by vikings when I play vs terran. Easily.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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The issue with Void Rays is not that they're uncounterable, or even overpowered. In the upper levels of play they aren't a big issue one way or the other. But in the lower leagues, Void Rays are a unit that just works well enough at most things that there's rarely a reason NOT to mass it. Anything else you focus on may turn out to be useless depending on what your opponent does. Even if your opponent masses Vikings, you can instantly switch to phoenixes.
Would good strategy with other units work better? Yes, but below a certain skill threshold, it ends up not really mattering.
On top of that, the Void Ray essentially invalidates the higher tier units of the Protoss. At the beginning of the second tier you get access to what looks, feels and acts like a capital ship. Periodically I tried to make some carriers or something... and basically anything I did other than Void Rays was not only not worth the effort in terms of strategic value, but wasn't worth the effort in terms of coolness factor.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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Carriers are a good counter to vikings, in conjunction to void rays. Other than that they seem kinda overpriced and useless.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Carriers? I dunno, it's been awhile since I played SC2, Kwea, but I remember Carriers being a bad idea against Vikings. Void Rays too, but I'm less sure about that. Especially Vikings, though, because they're simply so expensive vs. Vikings, and Vikings are so much easier, cheaper, and faster to build.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I'm very happy with the changes other than the depot for rax requirement. I'm not sure that was really necessary, especially with requiring a factory for nitro packs, although I say that as someone who almost never built a rax before the depot when playing terran. I've always been a 10 depot 12 rax kind of terran.
Raymond explained the problem with void rays in the lower tiers very well. It's also worth noting that vs armoured targets, uncharged void rays now deal twice as much damage as they did before. I think this keeps void rays useful, especially in a mixed force, but also means that massing them isn't the win button that it used to be in the lower tiers. That said, I just lost to surprise voids as terran last night down here in the bronze league.
I love the zerg changes. I was already using buildings to defend my spine crawlers, but the buildings died so easily that it was really only effective against melee units. This will help quite a bit. I'm a big fan of the roach change as well, which has already made my roach micro much easier.
The other changes are cleanup, I think.
It wasn't catering to whiners. There was a clear problem in the lower tiers:
quote:Since the release of Wings of Liberty, the StarCraft II balance team has been diligently studying how the game is being played, playing it ourselves, and seeing how evenly the three races match up on the battlefield. While we regularly examine Battle.net player data and statistics from all regions, the information we're examining in this blog was pulled exclusively from the North American region for simplicity's sake.
Protoss are played 38.5% of the time. Terran are played 38.0% of the time. Zerg are played 23.5% of the time.
These are overall percentages, but they're mirrored in nearly the same exact separation through each of the leagues. This clearly shows that zerg are played less often than the other races. When we look at things like the Top 200, we like to have this data in-hand so we can ensure that it's proportionate to the amount of each race actually being played. We don't want to have a huge chunk of zerg players sitting somewhere further down, unable to rise through the ranks.
Let's take a look at win percentages on a race-versus-race basis. This is something else we look at to see how matchups are faring over many games. These numbers take individual player skill into account, which helps to avoid the 50% win/loss percentage effect that the matchmaking system can impart on straight win/loss ratios.
Win % in Diamond (accounting for player skill) 49.6% win rate for Protoss when fighting Terran. 52.8% win rate for Protoss when fighting Zerg. 49.6% win rate for Terran when fighting Zerg.
Win % in Platinum (accounting for player skill) 56.3% win rate for Protoss when fighting Terran. 47.3% win rate for Protoss when fighting Zerg. 44.5% win for Terran when fighting Zerg.
Win % in Gold (accounting for player skill) 61.0% win rate for Protoss when fighting Terran. 61.1% win rate for Protoss when fighting Zerg. 49.5% win rate for Terran when fighting Zerg.
Win % in Silver (accounting for player skill) 63.6% win rate for Protoss when fighting Terran. 50.7% win rate for Protoss when fighting Zerg. 51.6% win rate for Terran when fighting Zerg.
Win % in Bronze (accounting for player skill) 59.0% win rate for Protoss when fighting Terran. 55.1% win rate for Protoss when fighting Zerg. 45.4% win rate for Terran when fighting Zerg.
As you can see there are some issues with protoss vs. terran in many of the leagues. From our own play experience, as well as feedback from the community, this matches pretty closely with what we're already aware of. We're working on solutions. What we're also aware of is that, while the numbers don't necessarily support the need for zerg changes across all leagues, the feedback from the community as well as our own play experience tells us that improvements are necessary to make zerg matchups feel and play better.
I think it was as simple as how easy and strong 4gate and its variants are as protoss openings, so even bronze league players like myself can use a good build easily, plus the strength and utility of void rays that made them unusually effective in the lower tiers.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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2 carriers along with massed void rays works well, because the gnats from the carriers keep the vikings from focusing just on the voids.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Notice at the higher levels the win percent for zerg were fine. Increase the life of their buildings while nerfing their opponents and guess what happens.
The only tier where there appears to be a bad discrepancy between Protoss and Zerg is the Gold level.
What we're also aware of is that, while the numbers don't necessarily support the need for zerg changes across all leagues, the feedback from the community as well as our own play experience tells us that improvements are necessary to make zerg matchups feel and play better.
It's pretty much caving, as they admit right there.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: 2 carriers along with massed void rays works well, because the gnats from the carriers keep the vikings from focusing just on the voids.
Against an oppponent who doesn't know how to focus fire? Yes.
Posts: 805 | Registered: Jun 2009
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It's a custom game, a giant map of Europe, RISK style. You captured cities and when you've captured all the cities in a country you get an income bonus. It's insane how well the game is done.
51 countries and 131 cities.
Posts: 1574 | Registered: May 2008
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quote:2 carriers along with massed void rays works well, because the gnats from the carriers keep the vikings from focusing just on the voids.
Two carriers that require their own building to build, meanwhile the Terran can keep building Vikings and medivacs more cheaply and quickly, and...n/m.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Notice at the higher levels the win percent for zerg were fine. Increase the life of their buildings while nerfing their opponents and guess what happens.
I expect we'll see what happens when new stats are published a couple of months, but they state clearly that they don't think the building life increase for zerg will have a large effect. How does that specific change make your life more difficult? It sounds to me like you feel like you're already losing to zerg more than half the time so anything that makes zerg better is bad. But you losing to zerg more than half the time doesn't imply that zerg are unbalanced.
More importantly, protoss were winning > 55% vs at least one other race in four leagues. If that doesn't tell you that protoss needed to be adjusted, I'm not sure what would.
Edit: And I say that as someone who enjoys playing protoss and has never lost a game in which he massed void rays.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
The matching system is now pairing me up pretty consistently against silver level players. I lose about 80% of them, but if I keep improving my mechanics I have hope that I can *finally* get promoted to silver.
By the way, there's a neat custom AI on battlenet. You can play against it on ladder maps by searching for "Fyn" (through custom games.) It doesn't have a maphack and it tries to scout (especially as Zerg using overlords) and when it sees what you have it follows the Blizzard AI's counter script. And on medium setting there's no resource cheat but it's still very tough as there's no micro cap. Anyway, it's definitely better and smarter overall than the blizzard AI. It's good practice.
Posts: 668 | Registered: Aug 2010
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I'm always looking for new 2v2 and 3v3 partners. 
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