Starcraft II Tips

Yeah ive seen people do that with their own proxy pylon.

I think it last like 3 seconds if u arent attacking something.

Edit: Wait, I didnt see the new patch. Fazing when full on charge? hmm I gotta check this out.

 

Grrr... I just failed after a 99.9999% win. Had hydras, lings, and roaches, and cornered a floating command center off the map. I ran out of irl time and couldn't get flyers

 

The new patch notes were fake.

 

Ahh I feel so vindicated.

When I got demoted from gold and put in silver it put me in at rank 64.

I quickly managed to get all the way to rank#1 in my division. Even if it is silver it makes me feel good.

I put me against a platinum player earlier too :/ I almost beat him but he was a zerg main and it was ZvZ.

 

Is that a beta-only portrait, Vicious? I can't find it in the portrait list. What is it?

Also, congrats on being 1st! I stopped playing 1v1 for a while, since it put me in platinum and I am nowhere near being good enough to be there. I am 8th in my gold 2v2 league, though!

 

Its one of the 4 collectors edition portraits.

There is a Nigh Elf Marine (mine), a Diablo Marine, I think a Tauren marine, and one more if I am not mistaken.

Dont worry about your Platinum thing, if you do not belong there it will demote you. I was winning about half my gold ranked games but then went on like a 5 game losing streak and then it demoted me. Not sure if its the loss or it takes into account other things like APM, etc.

I lost to some silver members though so that is probably why. In my defense I just started to use random and also had a bad day

Terran is my least favorite and worst class and I can confidently say I get Terran 7/10 games on random :/

 

Congrats on first!

Terran is your least favorite? Protoss is mine. I have no idea how to play them, only counter them.

 

Heh Zerg's my absolute worst here I keep on forgetting to tech up or make unit production buildings and have tendency to overproduce workers that i don't have any units to defend early on...

 

I feel like a jerk. I shouldn't be in the bronze league and I'm destroying everyone. Cracklings a2 and mutas a2d2 just aren't a contest. I'm going to get over confident and go on a losing streak after bronze I bet now...

 

I'm rank 8 gold. I still get cheesed probably 1/3 of my games and I win about 75% of those games, and about 50% otherwise. I think the cheese is the funniest thing ever, and it makes me want to play protoss SO badly (protoss itself isn't cheesy, but there are lots of fun options for them)

 

I started today rank 12, and lost three games in a row. Then in the fourth game, my opponents leave in the first 5 minutes, before anyone attacks. And I'm now... rank 11?

Blizzard, your ranking system belongs in the Diablo universe, because it is truly arcane in its workings...

 

That means you lost to higher ranked players and won against a higher ranked player.

If you consistently lose to lower ranked players you lose like 20 points each loss, but against a higher ranked player, you'll only lose like 1 or 2 points.

 

Lets also not forget about bonus points. Ive gotten upwards of 40+ points for one win over a guy 2 divisions ahead of me. And if i had lost that game i would have lost like 4 points. To the first guy for those 4 games you lose i bet you lose no more then what 25 pts at most? Then you prob gained more then that in a win and chances are your division is real close and you jumped ahead.

I went on a 5 game winning streak with 200 pts left in my bonus pool and went from 45th to 2nd.

 

What does the bonus pool do?

 

Extra points for wins, it seems to match your win points from what I have seen. So if you had a pool of 100 points and won a game worth 10 points yo would also get 10 bonus points for a total of 20 points for that win (and your bonus pool would go down by 10) then if your next game was 7 points it would match 7 points from the bonus pool.

It seems you get a point or two for losing a game, and I would assume the acquire over time if your not playing to sort of help casual players who do not play may games a day to stay competitive with rankings.

Reminds me of the extra experience mechanic in world of warcraft. If you logged of in a town you could get extra experience when you played again and if you didnt play long enough it was like a free level.

 

Yep, bonus pool accumulates over time so that players who don't play as often can keep up with those who play ten games a day.

 

what about jumping to the next lvl? how does that work? like jumping from bronze to silver. do i have to be rank 1 in bronze then get bump up?

 

You have to be in top 10 rank for sure. But besides that no one really knows.

 

Probably if your points pool gets too far ahead of the rest in your division or if you win against some higher ranked players.

I think when I got demoted it was due to losing too many in a row but most of all because they were sliver and I was gold so it tossed me in silver.

Often now in silver i may run into a gold or platinum player, I imagine if you beat a few of them without a loss you will get promoted.
I was like rank 45 in Gold when it tossed me in silver so I do not think your ranking in your division has a really large part in it.

 

ahh i see lol thanks for the info

 

I was in like 5th place when it promoted me from bronze to silver. Was incredibly random tho.

 

write down the serial number for the mobile phone authenticator and then if you ever wipe your phone, go into your account and remove the authenticator via the serial number you wrote down.

 

If I really suck at Starcraft 2 do you think Blizzard will give me my money back?

 

Sure, let me throw a few games for ya

 

Do you know if there is an actual limit to how much bonus pool u can accumulate?

 

I think it caps at 99 or 100 but I'm not sure.

 

Gah Terran 6 times in a row on random :/

I dont like Terran.

Lost a few games due to that but just won against a gold ranked zerg player. He tried mutalisks to take out my mineral line but I was marine heavy so I fended him off. Went for a fast expansion and was well bunked in and had missile turrets.

When I had good resources I went dual reactor starports and pumped out 8 or 10 vikings and went to find those mutalisks. However on the way I think I found every single one of his overlords and this late in the game that must have put him atleast 70 supply in the negative, then I was able to land the vikings at his expansions and start to kill workers.

he had a big roach force but every time they showed up I would just go to the air and wave

It didnt take long for him to GG because while I was doing this I started to produce dropships and did a drop in his main with stimpacked marines and took out all his tech buildings.

I ended up sitting on like 3500 gas and minerals though because I was so carried away with the attacking, I know thats bad. I should have started to make some thors or something but i needed more production buildings and by the time I had my buildings it was already game over.

Na some of my 2v2's have like 350 bonus points

 

I wish terran had towers that can go ground :/
How do i fend off zealots early in the game if I'm terran?

 

Rush for marauders if you know a zealot rush is incoming. Marauders with concussion grenades do wonders behind a barrack/supply depot wall.

 

I tried that and got demolished. I had about 10 marauders and a 4-man marine bunker to their 8 zealots and they obliterated all those forces.

 

Focus fire?

That shouldn't happen. Zealots are melee, and not that fast without charge, so they're at a big disadvantage against a line of dakka. Add to that they can't get at the 4 marines in the bunker (which should have an attendant SCV if they're attacking it), and 8 zealots should be no problem at all.

But zealot rush is the reason for building a depot/barracks wall, and just pumping out marines should be sufficient. Reapers also pack a punch against zealots, and can keep running away to take literally no damage. 3 reapers should make quick work against 8 zealots. If you have the speed upgrade, it takes almost no skill, too.

 

Yea 2 volley's from 3 reapers kills a zealot. You can kite them all day early game.

Pretty much every unit in the terran arsenal properly micro'd will destroy any gateway unit. Its just a fact of life ptoss players have to deal with. Sticking a few immortals in your stalker army helps alot against mass marauders.

 

Are Terran sensor towers supposed to detect cloaked or invisible units? The name indicates as such but I just got demolished because my units couldn't see the cloaked enemy (zealots???) even though I had two sensor towers in the vicinity. I also did a sensor scan, and my units just sat there like deer in headlights, duh...

Also people are a bunch of liars. I get on a practice game (or whatever its called) and told them I've only played a few games, they said they only played two. Their tactics and rate at which they created units proved otherwise.

I'm really beginning to hate this game already. It's a load of crap so far. I've read lots of tactics, none of which work. A line of marauders don't do crap against zealots, bunkered marines don't do crap against zerglings, and my units don't attack cloaked enemy with orbital scan or sensor towers even though I can clearly see them. So dumb.

 

those were dark templars, im not sure about the sensor towers but the missle turret does.i would say watch replays and play with a.i for practice

 

I can beat ai all day, then I get online in the practice league and get my butt handed to me. There was no option for building a missile turret and I had armory, engineering bay, factory, starport, and barracks built. There was no way to detect those cloaked units AT ALL! Shouldn't orbital command sensor sweep detect them too? My handful of marines and handful of marauders just stood there playing cards or something.

I don't get it. I used to play Starcraft quite a bit, granted ten years ago. I wasn't great then, but I at least understood the units and could win time and again, and usually wouldn't get slaughtered in the first five minutes of play.

 

Sensor towers detect them moving in the fog of war but only reveals their cloak if they're within a small radius of the tower itself.

For zerglings on bunkers, i'd recommend 4 marines instead of 2 marauders in there and have 2-3 SCVs constantly repairing it. For zealots, I let them hit my wall and before it reaches the burning red zone, i let them in and kite them since there's more space to do that in your base rather than let them destroy a supply depot/barracks which will cost you 100/150minerals and/or get supply blocked. Just rush for the concussive shells upgrade and use the wall to buy time until the upgrade finishes.

Orbital command scanner sweep will detect them but only for a short time within the area I think. You'll need an engineering bay to start building missile turrets.

If you want insurance for cloaked units, quickly train a raven.

 

are you sure? you get the turrent by building an engineering bay

 

I did. I had two barracks with four marines in each and six marauders behind, along with a wall of suply depots. Their probably dozen zealots broke through like it was a police tape line. I was able to destroy all but one of them.

The cloaked units then came storming in just a few mintus later, they were running around the tower and still nothing. Even with the orbital command sweep, my units just sat there with their pants down.

And what do you mean by "kite"?

 

If your going mass marauder be sure to get that concussive upgrade for 50 gas 50 minerals in the tech lab. Zealots just simply die to that.

The slow will let you kite them easy, if you have slow + stimpack its really gg for the zealots.

Here is a video this is without stimpack.

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Some marines in the mix is good as they do more damage per mineral (about 2 marines per marauder and 2 marines do more damage even to armored targets)

 

kite/kiting is pretty much shooting and running

 

I just got slaughtered again. Two barracks with four marines each and a wall of supply depots all got demolished in like one second flat by zerglings. All within like five minutes from the start of the game. There's no way to counter. These practice league people I've played are obviously very experienced, why don't they just go play the regular league.

I think I'm just gonna quit altogether, it's obviously not my game. I'm not even really enjoying the campaign either. It's a major grind so far. Thanks anyhow guys.

 

okay when kiting, it is kinda hard to keep clicking on the enemy. I miss click and I don't even click ON the enemy. Is there an easier way that clicking the individual?

 

Yeah, same here.

I dunno. I realize that as much as I enjoyed the first starcraft, you have tens of thousands of people that mastered the original over the last 12 years, that it amounts to being able to click the fastest and most precise to win. There's no fun in that...

 

Dude, don't give up yet! It takes time, but it can be very rewarding when you get into it. You don't even have to be good. You just have to find people of your own skill level.

If it helps, find a sparring partner. That's why there's a SC2 NBR friends list thread. I'd even spar you if you'd like - I won't do cheese tactics, or play to win, I'll play to give you some good practice.

Also, watch the I Suck at Starcraft 2 series. There are tons of guides out there to becoming a better SC2 player, but this series I think does it the best. You learn the kinds of mistakes other players make, and how to fix your own mistakes or how to take advantage of the mistakes of others. It's extremely helpful, and you should watch them even if for no other reason than they're pretty entertaining, as well.

Oh, and a little trick for kiting: depending on what you're facing, something I do is right click to move away, then "a"-click toward the enemy. This will cause my units to start attacking the nearest enemy, and sometimes there's only one or a small few units in the head of the enemy's pack, so my units will naturally focus fire. I just did that in my last game with three speed-upgraded reapers, and I was able to take out a whole horde of 10 zerglings and 3 zealots. The enemy units formed a thin line as they all charged trying to get at my reapers, so my reapers would only shoot one zergling or zealot at a time. This trick will be most effective with smaller amounts of troops, but it really helps when the enemy units are too tiny to click (and believe me, I've got a fat finger when it comes to clicking in SC2!).

 

You don't actually need to click the units when kiting. Just walk away, Press A and click on the ground wherever your cursor is and after you see their shot animation, move away quickly and repeat o_o Since most of the units running won't be like a wall but more of a line they'll focus fire on the front most unit first.

Sides I never played much of the original. Used cheats on the original campaign just for the story and then just left it at that. Now I'm just starting to enjoy a bit of multiplayer on SC2 since it's way easier It takes some practice but soon enough you'll be the one pulling off the annoying strategies that people hate.

Also, I think you meant bunkers and not barracks. Well if you're expecting a rush, make more units to defend instead of teching up right away. Make more than one or two barracks if you have extra minerals or if you have the gas, quickly make a factory and get a few helions out to deal with the zerglings more effectively. If your opening is solid, you should have a helion or two out by the time the opponent even has mass amounts of zerglings that can't be handled by 8 marines.

 

My problem is my play time is completely sporadic. Usually at night, but not always, and can't commit to anything either. I just played a game co-op vs AI. AI rushed me right away, asked partner for help and he just sat there turtling. I fought off the initial rush, but was hurt bad, the AI kept coming after me while he sat there amassing troops.

I went 0-10 in beta, and so far 0-6 in retail, and those are just practice leage games. Doesn't bode well. Can't even win one single stupid game.

When shouldn't I expect a rush? That's the thing, I always prepare to defend a rush, and if it doesn't happen I've wasted resources on things I could have used otherwise. I dunno 0-16 is a tell tale sign I need to quit.

 

Well if they didn't rush, marines can be used as part of your marine marauder medivac army and bunkers can be salvaged to get back the full 100 minerals so there's basically almost no wasted resources used for defending.

Could you upload a replay or two of how you lost so we can at least look into it and tell you what you can do better?

 

Thanks, but I didn't save any replays. And don't know how much good it would do anyhow because it would be criticized 20 different ways with 20 different ways things could be done differently or better. And that will be more confusing and frustrating. I've already spent a lot of time reading tactics that were just a waste of time apparently because they didn't do squat.

 

Unsaved replays are still kept in your Starcraft 2 replay folder. Well just practice around really maybe do 2v2 with an AI as an ally against 2 AIs. Start slow and don't give up

 

Post some replays if you can.

It's much easier for us to help and yes we'll criticize you, but that criticism will help.

Tactics are only useful in the upper leagues and only really useful in Diamond. You need to get a certain amount of practice doing build orders and general playing before you can even hope to apply said tactics.