StarCraft II Beta

[K9]

Ah cheers, glad it's not just my account being weird then.

[Rasix]

2v2 may be too much for my aged brain.  Phry can attest. 

[Phry]

Heeey we went 4-1, that ain't bad... of course first game they didn't know how to build anything... and second game had a guy drop, and last game i protoss "build inside their base" cheesed them....

[Lakov_Sanite]

If anyone US wants to teach a SC virgin my name is.....   Lakov.Sanite

[Teleku]

The always popular 'build shit in their base' technique - try it! I'm not even talking about cannon rushes or sneaky proxy 2gates. Send a worker probe out and go a normal 2gate build, only do it in their base, right in the open. Don't even try to hide it. It's HILARIOUS. People will generally lose because they panic and pull probes off the line to try and kill your buildings and they can't even get through the shields. Plus, cronoboosted zealots are really deadly early. Make sure to build your pylons/buildings right in the mineral line up against their CC/Nexus. It's especially funny against terran who were planning to wall off and get extremely flustered when you're all up in his shit.

Oh man, this is brutal.  I just beat 4 people in a row doing this, and those were the first 4 games I've ever played as Protoss.

[Rasix]

Oohhh hoo hoo.  Curb stomped some asshole that built in my base (complete with bunkers).  Seems like THOR is a good counter to viking cheese too.

 

edit: Tonight is like "Revenge of the Rasix"; destroyed a vray rusher (once I saw the stargate, I just went aggro).  Damn.  I might actually be getting better at this... if my macro didn't fall apart so much.

[Wolf]

OMG They killed the roach :(

[Fordel]

The Roach needed to die, I'm surprised it took this long really.

[Wolf]

no it didn't, at least not when there are no options. Kill the Roach but give me the ultra buff in the same patch :(

[Ironwood]

I've found an interesting psych trick.  Pretty much everyone expects a protoss to go Voidy.

I've won about ten games in a row NOT doing this.

[Tannhauser]

Playing it when I get home tonight.  Any tips for a complete noob?  Which faction should I learn first?  And macros?  Any simple, but effective strategies I should try first?  Was thinking Protoss first.

[Mosesandstick]

Get a build order, and if you're Protoss don't forget to use your chrono boosts (they're at your nexus). I'm a moron so I have to hotkey my nexuseseseses so that I'm building probes at a good rate and constantly chrono boosting. The chrono boost doubles the production rate (I think) for 20 seconds, and seems to me invaluable early game, either to boost production or to start pumping units you need asap.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, that.

Also, Stalkers.

Lots and lots of fucking stalkers.

[Wolf]

Awesome Hype Video

On that note, here's this weekend's starcraft goodies:

Saturday and Sunday 15 CET - That Asia vs EU thing from the video above. No idea who's playing yet, but both days will have two bo5s each. Day9 Will cast, no idea where yet.

Sunday, May 16th @ 1PM PST. 4PM EST. 10PM CET - http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hdstarcraft - HDH Idra vs Nonny. Idra might be playing Protoss due to roach nerf :/

Sunday, Afternoonish CET - ZotaC should be live on glhf.tv as usual.

Slush vs qxc for the MLG King of the Beta Hill is up on youtube.

SC2CL is also going to kick off this Sunday at 9CET, plenty of nice clans in this, but I think I'll be waiting for VODs and just looking at interesting match ups :)

That should be all :)

[trias_e]

Playing it when I get home tonight.  Any tips for a complete noob?  Which faction should I learn first?  And macros?  Any simple, but effective strategies I should try first?  Was thinking Protoss first.

Don't be zerg.  Control group your armies and your production facilities with control+1-9, learn the hotkeys for building units so you can do it without looking at your base.

The new patch is unfortunate.  Zerg seems kinda broken with crappy 2 food roaches.  You can go see high level zerg getting absolutely raped at max army vs terran max army in that MLG King of the Betal Hill video with qxc vs slush.

[Rasix]

I've found an interesting psych trick.  Pretty much everyone expects a protoss to go Voidy.

I've won about ten games in a row NOT doing this.

That'd pretty much kill me.  I haven't been making marauders at all lately v. protoss.  A good fake would be to throw down that stargate and never use it.

[Teleku]

As Terran I've found I can win almost every time against Protoss if I tech rush Banshee's.

Also, 7 games in a row won using the Protoss build in base strategy.   

[Ironwood]

They're all surprised when Stalkers come in and rape the hell out of their Reactored-up Flying monsters.

It's totally Lol.

[Polysorbate80]

Twelve games last night (Polysorbate.polysorbate), lost the first 11 horribly.  Only won the last because I finally found an opponent who was worse than I am.

1 was Terran, 2 were zerg, and 9 were Protoss...is that the norm down here in the bottom of the copper leagues?

[Rasix]

Twelve games last night (Polysorbate.polysorbate), lost the first 11 horribly.  Only won the last because I finally found an opponent who was worse than I am.

1 was Terran, 2 were zerg, and 9 were Protoss...is that the norm down here in the bottom of the copper leagues?

Seems like it.  Don't run into many zerg but the enemy du jour is a cannon turtled Protoss. 

[Ironwood]

Which is actually really easy to break.  There are SO MANY ways to bust into a protoss base.

For fucks sake, the Zerg can BURROW.

[NowhereMan]

Yeah, I'd have thought seige tanks with vikings and marauders would make short work of turtling Protoss. Of course I can't even install the game so my opinion's pretty much

[Wolf]

The new patch is unfortunate.  Zerg seems kinda broken with crappy 2 food roaches.  You can go see high level zerg getting absolutely raped at max army vs terran max army in that MLG King of the Betal Hill video with qxc vs slush.

Booo! Spoiler those, at least give it a couple of days :(

[euro elitism]btw, I wouldn't go so far as to call slush high level, he's a pretty "standard-two-weeks-ago" zerg. The en-vogue builds right now are FE speedling opening into speedling, baneling, hydra, into Broodlords OR one base two gas speedling opening into (mutas if you scout pure marouder) expand into speedling, baneling, hydra into Broodlords.[/euro elitism]

For reference Zpux, Dimaga, Haypro; For reference on non-standart very much working builds TLO zerg :)

[Rasix]

  Thor.

[NowhereMan]

The HDH invitational had been pretty entertaining, though the videos seem to be split between HDStarcraft's channel and Husky's. Idra's first game against Rett was interesting.

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt3QZ6aZIks I'll throw in a link too, though googling the channels isn't too tough.

[Teleku]

They're all surprised when Stalkers come in and rape the hell out of their Reactored-up Flying monsters.

It's totally Lol.

Yeah, it can be iffy if they try to rush Stalkers.  But part of my tech up strategy is to start training cloak as soon as possible.  So usually I can have a couple banshee's out, with cloak finishing research right as they come storming into my base.  At which point I just cloak and destroy their entire army with a few banshee's, then move on to easily destroy the base.  To be fair though, it's not really a strategy thats going to work well against people who aren't in the copper leagues with me, heh.

And yeah, I've seriously played against Protoss 8 out of my last 9 games.  I'm in copper league as well.  I seemed to play against Terran a lot before, but now its nothing but protoss.  I've maybe played against Zerg 3 times since I got into the beta.

[Ingmar]

I play Protoss because I like their sound effects best. 

[Ironwood]

They're all surprised when Stalkers come in and rape the hell out of their Reactored-up Flying monsters.

It's totally Lol.

Yeah, it can be iffy if they try to rush Stalkers.  But part of my tech up strategy is to start training cloak as soon as possible.  So usually I can have a couple banshee's out, with cloak finishing research right as they come storming into my base.  At which point I just cloak and destroy their entire army with a few banshee's, then move on to easily destroy the base.  To be fair though, it's not really a strategy thats going to work well against people who aren't in the copper leagues with me, heh.

And yeah, I've seriously played against Protoss 8 out of my last 9 games.  I'm in copper league as well.  I seemed to play against Terran a lot before, but now its nothing but protoss.  I've maybe played against Zerg 3 times since I got into the beta.

One wee scout owns you though.  I have a replay where I did just that. 

[Teleku]

Yeah, nobody ever seems to do that though.... and I don't know why.  Is there some reason, like building them is a different tech branch than what most protoss go for?

[bhodi]

Yeah, nobody ever seems to do that though.... and I don't know why.  Is there some reason, like building them is a different tech branch than what most protoss go for?

Your observer is built from your robo bay. As protoss, you have to choose between early robo bay (immortal into colossus), early stargate (void rays), or early twilight council (mass stalkers+blink, or zealot/sentry w/ charge into templar).

If they go fast void rays or 4gate zealot w/ charge, they probably don't have any way to see invis. If they're going 2gate, chances are you're going to be able to get fast banshee with cloak out before their observer. In fact, I always go with cloak instead of banshee #5 and #6 for this reason.

All protoss upgrade buildings are expensive (150 gas) so there's a great window where you can make a timing push into their base and they'll only have one of the 3. Because void rays are so embarrassingly popular, especially in PvT/PvZ, it's very common for them to go fast stargate and not have ANY way to stop banshees. I'm guilty of that myself, though I tend to favor the zealot+charge/sentry composition rather than early void rays (or did, until they nerfed sentry damage).

[Teleku]

Ah, that makes sense then.  Yeah, even from my very first attempt, I knew to get cloaking as fast as possible.  My strategy is to get 3-4 Banshee's with cloaking, and send them on in.  Cloaking makes up for any firepower deficiency .  To date, against Protoss, I don't think I've lost a game using that strategy.  Never seen anybody pull out an observer yet when I go that route either.  But of course, I'm also playing in the shitty leagues.   

[Wolf]

Yeah, nobody ever seems to do that though.... and I don't know why.  Is there some reason, like building them is a different tech branch than what most protoss go for?

Your observer is built from your robo bay. As protoss, you have to choose between early robo bay (immortal into colossus), early stargate (void rays), or early twilight council (mass stalkers+blink, or zealot/sentry w/ charge into templar).

Early, mearly.

6 Warpgate zealot/sentri spam :)

[Mosesandstick]

Very few lower level Protoss players use observers. Abuse accordingly.

Ironwood and I just lost a 46 minute (!) match 

[Ironwood]

Protoss cannons are observers also, though, aren't they ?

(Yeah, that game was bad and it was my fault.  My Zerg game is still fucking woeful. There were more nukes in it than Starship Troopers though)

[Mosesandstick]

I think all the defences that can shoot air are observers. We both got beat that game. I just checked the replay, and my army based observer ended up getting hit by the first nuke because I was careless. Which meant I was a bit of a 'tard when I thought we wouldn't get hit by the rest