1881

My favorite SC2 exchange so far: Players 1 & 2 vs. Player 3 and myself.

Player 1 “GIRLS!!”
Player 2 “girls”
Player 1 “!%$##$ girls. Your camping tank strategy is stupid. I don’t even want to keep playing”
Player 3 “So are you saying”
Player 3 “That you got beat by girls”
Player 3 “Or that you need to lose to be men?”

1882

Incoming patch notes – nerfs all around, but a lot more for Terran and Protoss.

1883

Yeah, better field those tanks while you can :)

Protoss

We have two key changes in mind for the zealot: the build time is being increased from 33 to 38 seconds, and the warpgate cooldown is being increased from 23 to 28 seconds. Zealot rushes are currently too powerful at various skill levels, particularly those that rely on rapidly assaulting an enemy base from nearby “proxy” gateways. We feel the window players have to scout for and fend off this rush is too small. We also want to address the problem of protoss being able to dump minerals a bit too quickly with the combination of warpgates and Chrono Boost.

Terran

There are several changes in the works for terrans. Reapers against zerg are stronger than expected. Due to the zealot build time increase, reapers would be a bit problematic in combination with proxy barracks, bunkers, and/or marauders against protoss. Therefore, we have decided to increase the build time of reapers as well from 40 to 45 seconds. Fast reaper + bunker, or fast marine + bunker rushes are problematic against zerg. Although this rush would never outright destroy the zerg player, we feel zerg suffers too much of a disadvantage from either having to cancel the fast expansion, or getting trapped inside the main base for too long, so we are also increasing the bunker build time from 30 to 35 seconds.

Siege tanks in large numbers are performing too well in all matchups. In the mid- to late-game, siege tanks are too dominant against all ground units. We want a small set of light and unarmored ground units to perform better against siege tanks. With this in mind, we’re changing the Siege Mode damage of the siege tank from 50 to 35, +15 vs. armored; to correspond with this, damage upgrades will be changed from +5 to +3, +2 vs. armored. This change reduces the base damage of the siege tank against light and unarmored units, as well as the splash damage.

Battlecruisers currently lack good counters from the ground and still perform very well against a wide array of unit types. We’re aware that it is not easy to get battlecruisers out for the cost, but at the same time, it is possible in both 1v1s and team games to create stalemate situations to bring them out. Overall, we feel that battlecruisers are too strong for their cost, and the terran-forced stalemate situations are causing less interesting gameplay. We will be lowering their damage against ground units from 10 to 8.

Zerg

Ultralisk damage is being decreased from 15, +25 vs. armored to 15, +20 vs. armored. This reduction is comparable to the changes being made to the battlecruiser and siege tank. Like the battlecruiser, ultralisks are simply too powerful for the cost, even though they are difficult to muster. Also, in combination with other units, ultralisks are difficult to counter from the ground. The ultralisk building attack (Ram) is being removed because the damage rate is too similar to its normal attack, which will be used against buildings instead. When ultralisks target tightly packed smaller buildings such as supply depots, the Ram attack is actually outputting considerably less overall damage than its normal attack, as Ram only hits a single target.

1884

Tanks are still good I think. Depends exactly how well their splash still takes out banelings and speedlings, particularly the 30hp banelings but in TvZ they should still be good. Obviously hydras will be tougher but I’d love Zerg opponents to be building hydras against me as blue flame hellions murder them. Hunter seeker missiles might also be good. I’m also very glad about the ultra nerf. Those things are so scary, at least marauders might be decent against them now. Maybe.
Not convinced the reaper change is enough. Reapers aren’t scary as units that come out in ones and twos in the early game. Reapers are scary to zerg when you have 5 barracks pumping them. An extra 5 seconds doesn’t matter then, its gas that limits you not building capacity, you can easily throw down more barracks as the reaper build gives you plenty of excess minerals to play with.

TvT going bio might be a bit easier but I’m thinking with splash marines will still die too hard to be useful. Maybe hellions to tank the tank fire, sent in with marauders will be good I don’t know. I don’t think it changes that matchup too much, unless splash on marines is really low.

TvP the change is huge. Chargelots are already decent against siege lines. They will just straight up murder tank lines now. Defensive tank based compositions are dead in this matchup now, I think. 35 damage against 150hp zealots is just not enough, ghosts would probably do more aoe damage for the cost.
That said, the warpgate change is huge in the early game when you can’t afford many gates… Protoss already has big problems with early bio pushes from Terran and now they’re going to be even more up against the wall to get units out on time to defend. I expect Terran play is going to be geared even more towards fast early aggression and early expanding, knowing protoss won’t have the mass to contest them. It’ll also make drops more effective as you’re more likely to catch the Protoss on a cooldown and unable to warp in defenders.
Finally, I guess the 4gate rush will have to be renamed to 5gate now.

In general, good changes, I think, although reapers possibly need an actual change to the cost or the unit, not the build time. I’m sad about battlecruisers though. They didn’t deserve that. Poor BCs.

1885

The BC change is horrendous. Against most ground units at that late a stage in the game that’s a flat out 25% damage nerf (due to the impact of armor).

I predict BCs will become unused again and Blizzard will up the damage to 9.

1886

I give up. I can’t beat void rays as terran.

If I go M&Ms I get destroyed by colossus. If I don’t go M&M, I get void rayed to death. The “standard” counter-toss build is 3rax, 2tech and 1 reactor. But somehow on top of this I’m also supposed to get siege tanks to counter the colossi, and starports for medivacs. In the meantime, the salad Tosser rushes me with five or six void rays (or counters my marauder rush).

Blah. I’m too slow for this damned game.

1887

I would think vikings would be awesome against colossi due to their long range to allow you to snipe them and when the void rays get close use the stim marines to take them down.

1888

Vikings are the Terran Collosus counter. Since MMM builds usually already have a starport with reactor its easy to get a lot of them quickly. At least 4 is good but the magic number is 7, I believe. Once you get 7 they kill a collossus in 2 volleys and you can directly engage the Protoss army with them just before your infantry. Generally the Protoss army won’t be able to kill them fast enough, so they’ll knock out the collossi before they do too much damage and then you should beat any reasonably sized gateway army that remains with your infantry.

Void Rays also die to Vikings, and also stimmed marines if they’re not charged. If they’re fully charged either you have to try and hit and run with vikings or just catch them in the open with a big ball of marines.

1889

What you produce can be as important as …
How much you produce, which can be as important as …
How you control what you produce.

Vikings are good advice, but you should also probably toss up a replay. I say this as someone who generally enjoys watching replays, so yeah a little selfish of me. But, it also means you may get better advice.

For instance, Vikings are a good counter to Colossii. But, if your economy is weak it won’t matter what units you build. You’d need to work on the economy part first.

1890

You also need to scout and know what’s coming with scans and such. It won’t matter if you are suddenly pumping out vikings if there’s already 4 collosi and a stalker ball moving up a cliff into your main.

1891

So I finished the campaign up yesterday on normal, and I enjoyed it a lot. Yes the story was kind of cheesy and cliched, but the execution was excellent. I thought the missions were varied and enjoyable, and I liked that you didn’t have enough money to upgrade everything. I’d like to try to get the achievements I missed, and maybe replay it on hard. It’s exactly what I expected from Blizzard, a super-polished experience with little innovation, frankly, I prefer that kind of experience to “great idea, but flawed execution”.

But now it’s time for multiplayer.

So let’s talk hotkeys. How do y’all set yours up? I’ve gotten into the habit of (terran and protoss) setting all my cc’s to 6, unit producing buildings to 5, research buildings to 7, 2 or 3 villagers to 4 and reserve 1-3 for my army. This requires use of the tab key and makes it difficult to set different waypoints for different buildings (say, air vs. infantry) and I’ve read that this kind of system generally isn’t recommended.

For zerg, I usually set each hatch to a different hotkey and double click to manually select the queen. That can’t possibly be the best way.

Also, to follow up on my generally ridiculed stimpack question of earlier, if you’ve got a ball of marines and marauders (colloquially called MM, I believe), can I hit stimpack once for the entire ball, or do i have to hit tab and juice them again (to get both the marines and marauders)?

Love,
Ike

1892

My hotkey set-up is Nexii on 5, Warpgates on Y, robo/stargate on 6, and army on 1-4. I don’t put tech buildings on hotkeys but I guess I could. I don’t know how much time it would save me honestly since it takes like 4 seconds to click the building and then click the upgrade and I maybe research like 6 upgrades per game max (3 atk+, 1/2 shield+ if I’m facing marines, and 2 of charge/blink/thermal lance)

1893

That’s why I put them on 7, a right-hand number. I like to hotkey them so I don’t forget to use them, but it’s definitely a lower priority.

Yeah, makes sense to put warpgates on a different hotkey than other unit producing buildings for protoss. I still find warpgates a little counter-intuitive.

1894

Warpgates go on Y automatically, it’s not my choice. I suppose I could just also throw them on 6 but that’s literally right above Y and then I’d have to tab for different structures.

1895

With gates all on 1 hotkey though you can just hit that hotkey and warp in 4-10 units without toggling the Y.

1896

As an old, slow clicker, I love the bronze league. I am finally closing in on that 50% winning percentage and I’ve been in a bunch of matches that could have gone either way. After winning 10 matches with the terrans I switched over to the zerg and won 5 in a row against an assortment of players both experienced and brand new (one guy said he was eating his dinner).

My streak came to an end last night against another zerg player. We were on a map that has both bases in the middle, very close to each other, but divided by cliffs and various chasms. The land route was quite long. Against other zerg I go speedlings and mutas, and when I sent out my first gang of speedlings I glanced into an expansion spot and found his fast expansion and crushed it. I thought the game was over right then. I teched up to mutas and sent them over to his base to harass his drones, only to find a half dozen hydras waiting for them. That ended poorly for me.

But I had my expansion up and running, with plenty of visibility thanks to my overlords being spread out all over so I was sure he only had one base. The replay shows me having a large income lead, but I couldn’t decide what to counter hydras with. I had the resource lead so I thought maybe I should tech up and crush him with the tier 3 units. As I’m mulling this over I notice a nydus hole building near my base and I destroy it. I start to create some roaches for drfense but I’m distracted by an enemy muta chasing away my overlords and I’m also trying to get my expansion running at high speed, and I’m also trying to decide if this is a good time to start a 3rd expansion even though I’ll have a hard time running it effectively.

And then a nydus worm emerges right behind my mineral line and 20 hydras pop out and kill everything. After watching the replay I am reminded that economy isn’t everything in the bronze league. Just one base is enough to build a menacing army if you focus on building it and concentrating it in one place, especially if your enemy is trying to manage multiple places at once when you show up at his front or back door.

1897

What do you mean toggling the Y? As it is right now I can warp in 4-10 units by pressing Y-shift-<unit hotkey>, so there is literally no benefit to putting them on a hotkey unless the Y key on your keyboard is broken or something.

1898

Bizarre. I just got promoted to Diamond league 1v1 and am starting out Rank 5. I know the ranking doesn’t matter much, but don’t you usually start in like the 90s at first?

Eh, just looked under the hood at the ranking points. The division I’m in is just ultra-low points. I bet someone out there is like “I’m Diamond Rank 1” and he’s actually like in 60th place in most other divisions.

1899

Reldan, do you have any of your replays online? Can you link a couple?

1900

One stimpack command affects all selected marines and marauders.