Void Rays are broken. They seem overpowered. I fall to them every time it seems (I’m always Terran). Maybe I’ll have to go mass marines to beat them, cuz mass anything else doesn’t do it.
Ayr
1662
I think Vikings should be a good counter, doubly so if paired with some marines. Voids cost about twice as much as a Viking, do only a little bit more damage when fully charged and have 7 ranged compared to Viking’s 9. So you should be able to kite and destroy those voids from afar, especially so since you should have twice the number of units.
The minute you see a Stargate go down you need to start throwing down the reactors. Mass Marine (even without Ghosts to support) will annihilate anything that comes out of there. You should get the ghosts though to shut down High Templar as well as a few Vikings if you see a Robotics Bay.
Wolff
1664
Yeah the mass void rays are getting a little old.
I’m a bit lost as zerg since the roach change. Its hard to get a decent ground force with the need to pump twice as many overlords. Hydras are great and all but just can’t take the hits like roaches can. I find myself with some success going speedlings and banelings into a few hydras and then corrupter/broodlords/ with a few mutas while waiting for the hive/greater spire. There is such a large window of vulnerability I’m finding and you really need 6 gas to pump out the Broodlords.
I’m seriously considering another race since tech switching is so much easier as toss and especially as terran (see day9’s comments on TheLittleOne). I love the feeling of zerg and pros have obviously handled the changes but I’m finding them a bit frustrating in games vs decent opponents.
Sure mutalisks are great for harass but are a serious investment and when the army comes knocking on the door they melt and vs decent players sure it makes them invest more heavily in marines then maybe they wanted to, but you just invested in mutas. Anyways some ramblings from me, still super excited for this to ship.
Ayr
1665
I really don’t want to burst your bubble, but if you think you have problems switching tech with zerg where all you have to do is put down one building and you can instantly pop out 6-12 needed units, wait until you play another race. As protoss it’s incredibly painful as you need to put at least 2 of the producing buildings you want to switch to (robotics, stargate) plus another for the tech and then you have to wait until each unit is individually produced.
Here, let me share my experience as protoss vs zerg in my recent gold league games - he expands at 16, there is nothing I can do since queens + spine defend so well. If I move out of position a group of speed zerglings can outrun anything I have straight into my drone lines and send me to the stone age. He techs to hydras and dominates the map since zerg scouting is by far the easiest and cheapest to do (you have overlords all over the map, and changeling are so good). I go colossus since that is the only counter I have against mass hydras, he sees that and switches to mutas then it’s GG since I don’t have resources to build a decent fodder + colossi against hydras and defend both mineral patches with anti-air at the same time.
I guess what I am saying is count your blessings : I only wish I had the ease of scouting and the ability to switch to any tech by putting up only 1 building. I am seriously considering switching to zerg, as I do feel they are a bit easy mode at the moment.
Guys they have to leave a few terribly broken things in the game so we all shell out $60 for each of the expansion packs.
Were the expansion packs going to tweak the balance or add new units? I thought they just added to the single player experience.
That was the last I remember hearing. If you wanted multiplayer you only needed to buy the initial game and you could compete with everyone.
Maybe they’ll do it Relic style and add a few alternate units that people can use to replace some of the originals, and then somehow balance them in so the old ones still work. There’d probably be too much shrieking for them to try it though.
I assumed Brood War style expansions, with new units and balance tweaks.
I mean, this is Activision we’re talkin about here. I won’t be surprised if they’re charging $15 for 3 new maps and 2 SC1 maps in 5 months.
Wolff
1671
I’m sure this is a case of grass is greener etc but its really not that simple as zerg. Sure you can sit there and have 10 larvae ready to spawn when that building finishes but then you didn’t make any workers for 2 minutes. I’ve played both toss and terran a bit and just found transitioning a bit easier. Obviously if I’m immediately making 4 gateways and nothing else then tech switching is harder. But if I’m doing 1 or 2 gate into robotics facility into whatever counter I see my opponent doing its just feels less hectic.
As far as map scouting sure Overlords are great if you can keep your opponent penned in, but it sure is a nice way to get supply blocked. Many players don’t bother to snipe them down which I’m happy about but don’t really understand why.
Hate to be lazy and not look it up, but did BW split the playerbase or could you still play against people with the original game? I think the latter style is the modern way to do it now and keep it fair for everyone, but I’m not a hardcore multiplayer RTS observer.
Huh. I love playing against Zerg as Protoss. Terran has so much flexibility and so many tricks up its sleeves, while Zerg seems a bit more predictable.
I go mass stalkers/colossi a lot. That’s how I counter the Colossus counter. Usually there are some charge zealots/immortals mixed in for tanking.
I love the versatility of mass stalkers. With their speed and blink, they’re great for map control, and they make short work of Vikings. Not as good against Mutas, but if your opponent has invested heavily in Mutas, he probably doesn’t have much of a ground army.
Ayr
1674
Well as toss you kinda need to go gateways into robotics for almost every build, since observers are your only scouting option. The problem is that once you get that scouting info (e.g. you see hydras and no spire on a zerg) you commit yourself to a certain build - go colossi for example. Now once you are committed it’s extremely hard to switch horses midstream. As zerg you can adapt more fluidly to the information you see on the field - you can very quickly pump out unit X needed with a minimum of effort and resources invested. And you should have 6 larvae available very easily from the standard 2 bases pump out 12 units in under a minute, whereas to pump 12 of any protoss non-gateway units is a lot more expensive and lengthy process.
It’s your call obviously and I encourage you to play both races a bit more to see which ones you’d like, but check out the latest games between Idra and Nony in the HDH invitational - the way the zerg player dictates the flow of the game is incredible - zerglings to force a sizeable ground army and deny expansions, mass hydras to couunter said ground army then mutas to counter colossi. I literally don’t see any solution to counter a good zerg player who is awake at the keyboard, just because they so effectively react to a fluid situation.
Overlords get very high speed movement rather early in the game so it’s almost impossible to snipe them with a ground army. So you need AA units to hunt them, which means committing yourself at least partly and spending a lot of resources on that. Unfortunately that means having a much smaller ground army to deal with your opponent, who hasn’t had to spend hundreds of minerals and gas just to deny scouting.
Ayr
1675
Stalkers are great, unfortunately they don’t fare too well against hydras since they lack in attack speed/damage and are far harder to stack. And if you have enough resources to build mass stalker/multiple colossi/charge zealots/immortals at the same time, the zerg who usually has better map control and multiple expansions will have tons more hydras then you have stalkers and enough mutas/corruptors to go for the colossi (it’s very easy to focus them down) as well as harassing your peon line. At least that’s how it worked for me, I’ll have to try it some more ;)
I’m pretty sure they split the player base. They did the same thing with Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne. They do it right now with WoW, if you don’t buy the expansions you can’t use the new classes/dungeons/powers.
I’m trying to explain better, but I realize that I don’t really have a concrete strategy. I really just have a bunch of tools, and my scouting dictates how I use them. Maybe it’d be easier if I just showed you a replay of a typical mass stalker/colossi game.
(Granted, I come from a 2v2 perspective. I rarely play 1s anymore.)
Ayr
1678
Ah. Well, 2v2 dynamics are completely different, as you can use your partner’s strengths to cover your weaknesses and the other way around. In 1v1 I feel Zerg has the distinct advantage in both scouting and the ability to react to it (building the tools that you mentioned above).
I don’t know. It’s easy for Zerg to scout expansions, but once they’ve set up a base it gets harder to scout inside. Terran can scan; Protoss have observers and hallucinations. Plus, you can take a Viking or Phoenix to go hunt down all those stray Overlords.
As for 2s, sure you can count on your ally to shore up your weaknesses, and that’s a huge part of the early game (my friend’s “build” gets units out much faster than mine). But we rarely specialize. We both get our respective counters to whatever we scout.
I have to admit that I don’t know too much about Zerg/Protoss, my brief stint with random ended and I’m back with my beloved Terran. Who by the way have the easiest scouting options available while also maintaining simple transitions through the exchange of add-ons. Although from what I do know Protoss are an incredibly rigid race who are all about hard counters, which means if you don’t have scouting info from your opponent (and you should, either through Observers, Phoenixes or Hallucinations) you can end up in serious trouble.
Oh and for anyone looking for some amazing Terran play and to illustrate the point I’m talking about above you should hunt down the Eric Panda vs TLO games, some absolutely amazing starcraft play coming from that chap (as per usual of course).
