1721

One of the problems I’m finding is when are roaches viable in ZvP or ZvT? With ZvZ they are good against mass lings and to some extent hydra. However when dealing with Protoss or Terran I find that either lings or hydras will do a better job then having roach. I lost a PvZ earlier due to the protoss just kiting around stalkers and killing my roaches, couldn’t get a tumor up because he had observers up stopping them and even with the speed upgrade they couldn’t catch up. If I had lings with speed I figured I could have gotten a surround and finish them that way.

1722

I do not think that roaches have much of a role in TvZ or PvZ right now. The best I can offer you is that they do well at stopping hellion and reaper raiders. Beyond that, I feel that you need to over-commit resources to get use out of them- they need basically all of their upgrades, and burrow, to begin to do cool stuff, and I do not think the investment is worth it compared to the other available options. Their large food cost hurts too.

1723

They are your tanks. You want them sitting in front of your hydras so they take the damage when you go up against the bioball. They have twice the HP of hydras. They also do well vs collossi and zealots. Not so well vs immortals.

1724

A dirty trick you can pull to take advantage of playing Random is to do a Baneling Bust if you pull Zerg against a Terran opponent. Even at higher levels of play a lot of Terrans will start their depot at their ramp before they scout you. Once they put the Depot there it becomes very hard for them to “fix” their wall-in and a Baneling Bust just flattens them.

Granted you want to scout them and make sure they aren’t doing a solid Barracks-Barracks or Barracks-Factory wall before you commit, but if you see that Depot then go ahead and blow them apart.

1725

For some reason, all my profile pictures and achievements have disappeared, as in nothing is even showing up just constantly loading… Anyone else having this problem? As in is it Bnet or am I boned?

1726

Yes, I also have it today. Seems like something is fucked up at Blizzard’s side.

1727

Awesome, was really worried it was me there for a minute.

Also finally got around to doing my placement matches today. Managed to snag Platinum so I’m pretty happy that I haven’t become absolutely horrendous since the Beta went down.

1728

I came back to Starcraft last night after taking a couple weeks off due to loss fatigue. I think the break was good for me, because I have been playing better than I ever have. I just went on a nice 6 game winning streak in 1v1. It’s finally starting to click for me, where I can kinda sorta multitask my economy/army/structures/scouting, at least well enough to keep spending resources on stuff so I don’t end up with a huge surplus. And I’m starting to get a better instinct about when to expand/when to go after opponent’s expansions, which is extremely useful in keeping the ever-important economic edge.

In the game that I lost to break my streak, I knew exactly what the other guy was doing, but I so badly screwed up my response to his strategy, it cost me the game. I identified that he was building two Starports early on and pegged him as going for Banshees. So, I started building Vikings to deal with the Banshees, and an army of Marines/Marauders/Siege tanks to clean up his base. Unfortunately, I dropped the ball on building detection. When he rushed my base with Banshees, I had plenty of Vikings to intercept, but no missile turrets or Ravens to detect him. If I had built even a single Raven (I had the resources and the capabilities, but totally forgot that they are detectors), I probably would have won that game.

Lesson learned.

1729

You can also just use orbital scan to reveal them. Very easy if you have your command center bound to a control group.

1730

I was doing that, but that should only really be used for emergencies. For 2 reasons…

  1. The opponent’s army just has to move out of the range of the scanner for a few moments. I’d scan him, he’d fly off to another part of my base and hit that part, and then come back and wail on my workers again. I eventually held back his attackers, but the cost was devastating.

  2. It wastes energy that can be put to much better use. After he wrecked my economy, it took me a long time to get back on my feet because I had wasted all my energy on scans. A few MULEs could have jump started my economy and helped me get back into the game, but I had spent all that energy trying to find his cloaked Banshees.

1731

Just wanted to say I was very wrong on the use of roaches- they are also useful against zerglings, and against a terran mech army with too many thors and not enough siege tanks, as Idra so deftly proved at Gamescom. This is why I’m not in diamond!

1732

Where can I find tips or replays for beating very hard AI using Terran? I can usually beat hard but I get destroyed on very hard. I’ve been trying to beat zerg but they always kill me on the second rush.

1733

Anyone come across a good walkthrough/strategy for the last campaign mission? I’ve played the entire campaign on hard and it hasn’t been too bad, but I’ve been beating my head on this one for ten days or so. I’m not going to dial it down to Normal on the last mission. I want my Mengsk portrait! Or whoever it is!

1734

Here’s me beating very hard zerg with Terran, maybe you can glean something useful from it. Not that I’m a great player or anything.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?uwwfhrb0ehmu246

1735

Almost all missions on hard can be beaten by massing the corresponding counter unit. In the last mission that’s either Banshees or Vikings.
A few bunkers and tanks at your entrances, the rest goes into the massed unit.

1736

I don’t think that would have worked with the extremely large swarms that start showing up at the end. I finally got it with massed Planetary Fortresses, of all things.

1737

yeah if you take out of the air, then you can just mass planetary fortress + a lot of siege tanks.

1738

Siege tanks are your friend.

Seriously though, if you can manage to get a tank out before the AI’s first attack coupled with some marines you can easily take it out. Tanks with Siege and a few Vikings will destroy his 2nd push and then just push and win.

Alternatively just hit him with Reapers early if you want to win and not practice your macro. The AI is completely incapable of responding to early rushes.

1739

For the campaign, can you guys give me a list of technologies to NOT waste money on? I’m asking this way so I’m not privvy to any accidental spoilers beyond the units I know are are in the game.

Thanks!

1740

I didn’t know there were any technologies that were useless.