Starcraft II Tips

They had coverage over the web actually, so you could have just watched it over a flash player

I don't know if it's the commentators or what but I thought those matches were pretty intense and exciting, I got up at some points and started yelling at my monitor haha, *votes yes on competitive gaming being a sport*

 

On what graphic setting do competitive players play on? I feel like many of the graphic options are just too distracting, and it's best to turn off all lighting/shadows and play on the lowest settings.

Or does one eventually learn not to get distracted by pretty sparkly things?

 

You learn to not get distracted

I think they peak at very high even with a monster rig just to prevent sudden lag spike at intense moments

 

Yeah, it wears off very quickly. Oh, wait, no, it keeps distracting me, that's why I constantly LOSE!

 

... the pros use lowest possible settings, for speed and minimal distraction.

Incidentally, I have also heard - from a Day[9] daily, and he was passing on something he had heard from someone (TLO, I think?) - that puting all graphics to the lowest setting, but putting effects and textures on ultra makes undetected cloaked units really easy to see. Could be useful if it's true. :-\

I was drooling over SC2's prettyness when I first got it, but I don't think I am actively distracted by it. That said, I am clearly not as good a player as you, and maybe there is something to the idea that all the extra detail of higher graphical settings is somewhat like bloatware, consuming some of your brain's processing power that might be better spent on gameplay.

 

I remember hearing that on a daily, haven't bothered to test it yet. I play on high just for it to be pretty without worry of lag spikes, if I ever got serious I'd probably lower some settings

 

They actually have to play on High at GSL and Blizzcon just because of that glitch.

 

Is it the combination of low + ultra or do you just need to have ultra on effects/texture?

 

In fact, I'm going to log on right now and see if anyone wants to check this out with me.

 

I'll test.

 

Ack you were about to win did your net crash?

 

Ugh ... I got the wonderful "waiting for server: surrender" option.

But I was all, "No way am I quitting this game!" Then the game resumed ... and about a minute later, I was dropped.

I instantly checked to see if my internet was down and ... no, it's fine. Tried logging back into battle.net, and it wouldn't let me in the first couple of times. I'm back on now, though.

I am extremely disgusted with battle.net right now.

PS - For anyone interested, here's the replay.

 

Roach rush is pretty darn effective

I should have expected it, and I did but I was looking forward to roasting all your drones with blue flame hellions too much to care

You got way more roaches faster than I expected though, the point was to beat you to the punch with the hellions.

But I had my base mining again with 6 mules and started to get tanks & marauders I think I could have taken you because I would have just kept all your workers dead and if you came after my base I would just go airborn.

 

Looking over the replay, you were all over the place ... but I was getting hydras so I could kill your floating base, and figuring I was ahead, I was prepared to send my overlords out all over the map to find you. I think I'd have had it, but I guess we'll never know. >:-(

In other news, I have since played two 1v1s, and have come out victorious thanks to my new roach hydra build (and not losing my cool under fire). Geez, all this time I've been doing things the hard way!

 

Well get on now I can get one or two games in we can rematch.

 

Roach hydra is cheating pro build

 

Roach Hydra was standard in beta in all match-ups.

Now its iffy. Against Protoss its fairly decent, but if they go 2 gate robo or any kind of fast robo build, they will stomp you, and in TvZ, it is nearly always auto-lose because Marauders/Marine/Medivac > Roach Hydra.

ZvZ is either Roach/Infestor or Baneling/Muta anyway, and so Roach Hydra is pretty popular.

I'll be on Friday all day, so I hope to play with you guys.

 

Ah yeah I won't be around this Friday

I want to hide from farful before he beats me to oblivion

 

So, is this the way to go about setting my graphics?

'scuse my ignorance, but what does one get with a robo? Immortal or colossus (or both)?

 

It depends, once you got obs into their base, you should be able to tell if they are going roach heavy or hydra heavy depending on how hard they are droning. If it looks like a roach heavy attack in the next couple of minutes, of course you want to go immortal heavy. But if it looks like they intend to macro a bit and get a goodmix of hydra/roaches, just expo with either an immortal or once you start robo bay. If they are macroing really hard, just run them over with 1 base colossi.

The obs scout is really key.

Honestly though, 1 base Protoss against Zerg is really iffy as well. I always either forge fast expand, or 3/2 warpgate expand.

Although Protoss isn't my best race so my advice might be crap.

 

Zerg is usually easy for me (at my skill level) with just a 4gate, so I'm wondering what higher leveled games would be like. I feel like stalkers are just as good as immortals (if not better) against roaches, especially because of their speed. Then again, I've never really built an immortal against zerg before, so I don't really know

I used to always avoid any advanced structures like the plague because if the game got that late, it'd lag the crap out of my computer. Now that I got a new computer I really ought to try playing "normally" with templars and colossi and other tier3 units.

 

Well an immortal can tank some roaches and if it survives a fight, 100 shields will quickly regenerate Not to mention immortals take 10 hits minimum (100 shields and all damage beyond 10 gets reduced to 10) before you get start working on it's health which is another 200 iirc so it's really a nice tank. It also 3 hits a roach since it does I think 50 damage against armored units which is a lot Besides, it's not that far up the tech tree and doesn't consume as much supply as you'd expect for such a useful unit

 

It is possible 4 gate all the way to 1500+ Diamond level, but it is really bad to do so since it teaches nothing in the way of expansion timing and tech timing.

You should definitely start playing normally and develop standard mechanics. Since 4 gate to any competent player is a free win.

The problem is Immortals only have 5 range, are fairly slow, and most importantly cut into Colossi production. Since Colossi > Immortals in nearly every situation except against Ultralisks, you want to be making Colossi as much as possible, and not be delayed at all.

 

Hey guys, did anything come out of the testing you did? Which settings worked best? I'm tempted to just stay with high settings for pure enjoyment

Do you think you could quickly explain forge fast expand? Do you need the forge for cannons or?

Hmm I do like Colossi, do you feel they're vulnerable though? How do they fare against armored units? When there is a line of units, how many of them get hit by splash damage and is all splash damage equal?

I wonder how much longer a Colossus will last than an immortal vs. armored units... I should look up their health.





On another topic... I just can't seem to bring myself to use control groups for units! I always double click the unit of choice during battle..
Seems like adding new units to groups/making sure i press the right number takes too much time and hurts my macro! Help!

 

OH GOD ANOTHER CAT! :3

Colossus can move over units so you can easily pull them back behind your army in case they get focus fired. They also have the cliffwalk advantage and their long range. They're really vulnerable to anti-air though like vikings and corruptors. Damagewise, they're probably better than immortals really but in terms of tanking, I'd say immortal can take slightly more damage than the colossus due to the shield's ability.

Forge fast expand is basically having the forge to help the wall in below the ramp and a few cannons to prevent run by. You don't exactly spam cannons but rather just 2-3 behind the buildings.

 

Our testing showed....

The game looks horrible on all low with high effect/texture.

Made it look worse than SC1 IMO lol, also both of us didnt see cloaked units any easier than normal.

 

... as far as I'm concerned, I'm just going to stick with my preferred settings.

I guess in a couple of instances, the cloaked unit was more obvious, but it wasn't anything that I think I would gain a lot of advantage from using (at my level). Besides, I try to have at least one detector per base and one following my main army.

To test it out, I'm sure you can just watch a few relevant replay at the appropriate settings.

 

I just don't like my chances of things going that well for me again.

 

Go for it I want to watch

 

Yessss. excellent

lets get on now.

 

Temporary outage of battlenet server o_o

Seems like your rematch was not meant to be

 

Im on now no problems.

 

I'm still at work ... maybe I'll get to play tonight.

 

ok im off work tonight, but that means no distractions like last time

 

I'm online.

Let's play some games !

 

Be there shortly putting kids and getting situated

 

You crashed out EZ so we lost. Im taking my food break and will get on here shortly.

Room needs to cool down anyways my computer cooks me slowly like a rotisserie chicken when I game all night without a break.

 

Check out the SCII Friends List thread for the replay!

 

Since I've been feeling like Protoss is my weakest race, I've been laddering just as Protoss on the NA and KR server. It's interesting to say the least, as I fail at timings. All in all my 50% win-percentage as Toss is holding true.

Hopefully with enough practice my Protoss will be as good as my Terran and *gasp* my Zerg, which has improved a lot since I mass laddered as it on the EU server.

Here's a replay pack with a bunch of games from ladder. Higher the file size, longer the game.

Random's Diamond Ladder Protoss Failtrain

The best matches are probably the ones against Fallen, Kyari, and ToR.

 

Finally trying to get back into Starcraft 2. I stopped playing and got obsessed with Pokemon again for over a month. Seeing Tychus makes me feel at home again. I think I'll replay singleplayer on hard for s and giggles. Are there any good sites with maps, including campaign/sp maps?

I think I've played this mission too many times. The battlecruiser gets to my position, but my defense is locked down and I really don't need help. lol.

 

I wish it looked that pretty on mine. I have everything set to low. >_<

 

Try going for the brutal difficulty Now that one actually requires you to think if you have the army to take it out in one go and you'll need to micro better too

 

@raz1337

Is that in game game play, or an in game cut scene. I really wish my SC2 looked like that. I have everything on the highest, except for shadows and it still doesn't really look like that.

I have a 3870 in xfire, so I don't think it can handle shadows (esp. in large battles).

 

It's an ingame cut scene that really looks the same as ingame. I noticed slowdowns a bit. I just reinstalled though so it's all default settings. I'm going to uninstall my current drivers and reinstall the latest ones, because I think right now I have the asus stock video drivers.

 

lbrandy.com Blog Archive Using genetic algorithms to find Starcraft 2 build orders

 

Sooo, if the seventh roach is built at 4:40 as indicated, what happens if someone else rushes you with zerglings or worse yet, a worker rush? Sounds crazy, but killing only one of these roaches would destroy that whole strategy.

 

You scout beforehand of course.

 

So, thought I'd give it a try.

First couple of attempts vs AI failed miserably. Kept forgetting the build order, timings were off. So I wrote the BO down, had it next to me while playing, and it worked! I had 7 roaches by 4:34, despite my timings being somewhat iffy. Here's the replay.

After trying it again with success, I decided to see how it worked in the real world. Got a zerg opponent, and executed the build order flawlessly ... well, not quite flawlessly. After my roach warren pops, I hit 'S' then 'RRR' and ... not enough vespene gas. I forgot to put drones on gas! You can see my terrific fail here. Side note, at one point I thought I might actually pull a win off, but I didn't. Thank dog I didn't prematurely gg him, thinking he had lost.

Anyway, did I let my screw up get me down? Heck no! I tried it again and ... yes! 7RR FTW!

So, am I going to lean on this build order exclusively? Nope, but I'm sure it will become part of my arsenal.

EDIT: Now that I think of it, I may have my times wrong - I got the times from the build order tab of the score screen. So, does that mean my 7th roach was started at 4:34? If so, my timing was quite off, but it was still good enough to win without much effort!

 

I hate to say this, but if you can execute a 7RR flawlessly you should be able to hit diamond league in no time. You really shouldn't be losing until then.

Terran can stop it with a bunker + 4 marauders. Protoss can barely stop it (requires a forge/2 cannons/sentry/blocking off ramp).

Anyway, keep trying it, and start learning to micro with those 7

 

What is this 7 roach rush I FEEL LEFT OUT D: