Remember when we tried to make a community show with all of us starcraft tumblr people? And like, most of you just lost interest in working on it after about 2 weeks. Yeah, I do.

But oh well, it was fun I guess, and I’m still thankful for all the work our streamer/editor put into it.

I do wish it took off and you guys actually stuck with it.

And I kinda know I just dropped it because I was tried of trying to pull everyone together and getting no where.

But that’s the past.

herp de derp.

image

in other news I do event management now

Sigh.

scdojo:

“Brood War changed StarCraft 1 completely. HotS is a glorified patch.”


Lets talk specifically about PvT for a moment. PvT is the match up for Protoss right now which is evolving the least slowly. While there are some clever things going on, overall you will play a macro based Colossus style with a couple of Forges at the top level. Not quite as much innovation going on there as in the other Protoss match-ups at the moment.

When HotS came out, there was this unit called the WarHound in it. Oh god, it was craziness. This WarHound unit, it KILLED mechanical Protoss units, especially in the early game! When I logged on, it didn’t take me long to figure out that all my old Robotics openings didn’t work anymore. I played a whole bunch, and started coming up with clever openings to adapt to this new unit. I’m fairly certain that PvT was going to now switch over to StarGate tech as the default opener. Totally cool, especially since the early game defense given to you by the Mothership Core allowed you to do such a thing without dying. Later into the game, I was experimenting with all sorts of transitions against these new armies I was facing in PvT. Eventually, there was some pretty sturdy early triple Robotics builds after StarGate openings, totally new stuff, which was working the best. Really awesome and exciting time.

Sadly, the WarHound’s exact stats were not exactly where they should theoretically be at. Of course, that seems reasonable, right? It was still early on in the beta, and there are lots of factors to take into account to tweak a unit just right. Didn’t matter. The community went into an uproar about how terrible the WarHound was, how imbalanced it was, and how it would single handedly destroy HotS and SC2.

Blizzard removed the WarHound. PvT went back much closer to normal. Now people are extremely upset that the patch is lacking and not fun. That it doesn’t change anything.

“Brood War completely changed StarCraft 1.”

Let’s talk a bit about what Brood War actually did.

StarCraft 1 Vanilla (without Brood War) is a completely imbalanced game. Disgustingly imbalanced. Zerg just straight up wins. With no medics and no Goliath Range, Terran is screwed. With no Corsairs (not to mention DTs), Protoss is screwed as well.

We didn’t know this back then. People were absolutely terrible at RTS games back then. Micro and Macro were just ideas. Timings, build orders, cost efficiency…. all completely new and unmapped. Anyways, that stuff doesn’t really matter either, because the tools simply were not there to make SC1 Vanilla balanced in the long term.

Brood War came in, and somehow gave us a set of units, that over time, would end up allowing the game to be balanced. Did these units change the game? Yes, of course. The DT, the Medic, and the Lurker were frightening new units who made so many things different. But really, everything was becoming different all the time, because we were all still learning how to play RTS games properly.

Now remember a few paragraphs before how I said that Brood War gave us the units which allowed the game to be balanced in the future? Here’s one specific example of HotS doing this: The Tempest. Right now, super late game PvZ is a problem. Take a look at Seed vs Symbol from the recent GSL games, or Creator vs Curious from the recent WCS Asia Finals, to get an idea of something that is likely to become a big problem over time. Carriers do not cut it in SC2. They are a huge sink of resources, and in the mined out map game, are not efficient enough. The Tempest gives us a real answer to work with, costing nothing to engage away from the static defense and Infestors which are becoming so standard in the later game. Blizzard is giving us a tool to have balance in this unit. Yet many people hate the unit, and complain about it constantly.

“Something about the way races are supposed to be, and how Protoss is a mere shadow of its former self”

I’ve seen arguments and threads (especially when people were unhappy with the power of Protoss in early HotS) about Protoss not being the race with big heavy hitters like its supposed to be. WHAT? If you look at SC1, Terran was the least mobile race, normally sitting around turtling nonstop, getting an insanely good mech army up to fight against itself or Protoss. Hell, even sometimes against Zerg. And even against Zerg, the overall standard was to wait for a Science Vessel and 3 Tanks before really doing very much. Yet people welcomed moving around the map all game with Marines and Marauders. The Marauder has nothing to do with the “flavor” of what Terran was in SC1.

StarCraft 2’s future

People need to stop bandwagoning and jumping to conclusions. SC1 was 1 or 2 years old when BW was released. We now have almost 14 years of RTS experience to work with. We are so much further ahead of where StarCraft 1 was when Brood War was released in terms of understanding how to play RTS games, that the only way to see game changing units is to make them insanely good like the WarHound.

StarCraft 2 is in an amazing spot right now. It’s already entering that phase that SC1 was in for the past several years, where each week or two there are some slight variations to builds coming out, both because we are learning how to play better, and because of the metagame shifting. 

I am still very much looking forward to the actual release of HotS, so that we can watch these new units get added into top level play, and watch the ways they will effect the movements of the metagame.

I listened to people decreeing the end of SC1 from 2002 until 2010 (when the SC2 Beta was finally released). They were all wrong, and anyone talking about it now is wrong too. SC2 is the best damn game in the world. Its more beautiful and complex than anything else being played at the moment. There is absolutely no RTS game on the horizon which could possibly knock it off its pedestal.

PvP: MC’s 2 gate pressure into Blink/Observer

scdojo:

There are a lot of ways to open up in PvP, each with its strengths and weaknesses. One of the safest and most powerful (on some maps) is the Blink/Observer opening. And boy, oh boy, are there a lot of ways to open with Blink/Observer.

This build MC did in the OSL (I think it was vs Best, could be wrong though), and it really caught my eye. One of the most beautifully put together builds of this type that I’ve seen. This was done on Antiga Shipyard, which is the map it would be the absolute best on, but could work on Cloud Kingdom, and to a lesser degree, Shakuras Plateau. Don’t try it on Daybreak.

Here’s the build:

9 Pylon

13 Gateway (scout here, MC didn’t scout IIRC though)

15 Assimilator

16 Pylon (Chrono Nexus)

18 Cybernetics Core

19 Assimilator

20 Gateway

21 Warpgate (Chrono Boost Warpgate upgrade only now)

21 Stalker

24 Pylon

26 Stalker, Stalker

32 Pylon (Proxied somewhere near his base)

32 Twilight Council (just as stalkers pop out of your gateways)

34 Warp in 2 Stalkers at your proxy Pylon, this gives you 5.

Push forward immediately and together with your 5 Stalkers. You will have an army advantage at this moment vs almost every build.

37 Robotics Just as Twilight Council is finishing

(you should have 27-28 Probes, and 5 Stalkers at this time)

From here, Chrono Boost your Blink upgrade, and make some more Stalkers.

41 Gateway, Gateway

2x Stalkers, Observer

At 9 Stalkers, make 2 Sentries and a Warp Prism. If he has an expansion, you can use this to Force Field him in or out of his base and utilize your Stalkers to gain a huge advantage or outright win.

NOTES:

If you push into their base with your initial 5 Stalkers, and realize that they went for a 1 Gateway Blink rush, you have very limited time to do your damage. If he’s good, your stalkers will not get away. Make them count, make some Sentries at home, and get an Immortal.

If you are facing a mirror build, be careful about your choices. You can make Immortals and try to expand, but do not sit at home making only Stalkers. If you choose to continue Stalker production, you must be aggressive, and not miss your Macro at all if he has chosen the Immortal/Expansion route.

Don’t be afraid to abandon the build if you sense aggression in the form of 4 gate. You will have an advantage after defending it, even if you had to make several Sentries.

Against a purely aggressive Blink build, you will need to play defensively with Sentries holding your ramp. He will have more stalkers, and will easily kill you if you miss a Force Field and he has read the situation correctly.

Ok, that’s all I can think of for now. EnjoY~~~~!

the Riot shit squad was at it again.

notgaryoak:

http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/zf6bg/dont_listen_to_riot_the_lol_team_exclusivity/

I can’t express how furious I am at Riot actually trying to force organizations to pick having a LoL team or a DotA team and basically saying if you do both you’re banned from the next Pro League season. This is fucked on so many levels. Sure, they backed down because people like EH, coL and Dignitas manned up and basically gave them the collective finger, but whats to stop them from trying to do it again? They need to stop bullying the scene. It makes me so mad working with dignitas now (who happens to be looking for a new DotA team) that they might not get to expand into DotA again, mainly because I’d get to interact with these players which is exciting on a ton of different levels. In short, Riot needs to calm the fuck down. And now a damn good quote from a different person I saw from reddit

“That’s why Riot’s making eSports harder to cultivate. eSports groups like EG, coL, and Dignitas want teams for Dota 2 and LoL. Riot is already preventing eSports from growing by not allowing other ARTS to participate under the same venue, but they wanted to DISBAND and PREVENT eSport groups from having teams on both games, regardless if they are playing under the same venue.

The groups already respect LoL as a legitimate eSports, that’s why they’re seeking teams for LoL in the first place. Riot’s actions in the past two weeks show that even Riot doesn’t believe LoL’s integrity as a legitimate eSports when clearly it already has major success and recognition.

Additionally, I feel as if Riot wants to eliminate Dota 2 as a competitor. Competition is what drives competitors to push and improve themselves, but Riot doesn’t want that. Instead of pushing innovation for LoL and improving their own game, they decide it’s more convenient for them to keep Dota 2 down so that they have no reason work harder to improve their own game. They want to keep their philosophy and plans the way they are; they’re showing that they can’t adapt to new situations. LoL players are getting hurt out of this as well and that’s why I think LoL players should be just as outraged.

Riot as a company not only tried to hurt Dota 2, but also hurt LoL, it’s players, and e-Sports as a whole.”

Why MMA vs DRG might be the best Finals yet.

scdojo:

I got to thinking today about epic matches in SC2’s history this far, and while I’m not sure which is actually the best, MMA vs DRG just keeps popping into my mind. Here’s why, brought to you by Team Red Baron:

MMA was on top of the world, killing everyone, tons of fans, a bunch of money already won.

DRG hadn’t done much of anything yet. He was an unaccomplished SC1 player who had been working ridiculously hard to try and make a career in SC2.

When MMA went up 3-0, I was so certain the match would end in game 4. It’s just too demoralizing. Losing 3 games right in a row, vs someone with this much skill and experience? Not to mention, DRG’s base skills were actually superior. That’s the real kicker. At the time, DRG was for sure the strongest mechanical player in the world, yet he couldn’t take a game off of MMA.

And then he came back. 1 win. 2 wins. 3 wins?!?!?!

Game 7 could have been a complete crap game, and this series would have still been one of the best ever. Think about MVP vs Squirtle.

But game 7 was the best of all. Shakuras Plateau, a map that MMA should certainly have an advantage on. An uphill battle for DRG. And he was on the ropes the whole time. Losing units, hatcheries, taking bases late. But somehow, he stayed in it. Somehow it came down to having brood lords inside of MMA’s base, with both players not mining for periods of time. 3-4 more units could have swayed the game either way, but MMA forced a victory for himself.

As MMA celebrated and got his trophy, even though he was king for that day, DRG left an impression on everyone that he was the real deal, not some one time high placer.

God that series was so good.

Seed’s 1 gate expo PvZ

scdojo:

Hey everyone, here’s a little guide about Seed’s 1 gate expo PvZ on Cloud Kingdom, brought to you by Team Red Baron. (awesome pizza sponsor, try em out if you want a really fast and tasty pizza!)

This build order was used by Seed vs SlayerSCoca in the WCS Korea tournament on Cloud Kingdom. (he has a few different 1 gate expo builds, this is my favorite though). I’ve been using it a lot lately, and its my favorite 2 base build for PvZ by far right now. Let’s get right into it!

9 Pylon @ your ramp - scout with probe

13 Gateway at ramp

15 Gas

16 Pylon

17 Cybernetics Core (finishing wall at ramp with gate)

Stalker / Warpgate (chrono boost both) when Core finishes

Nexus as you have money

26 Gas

27 Stargate

28 Gateway

32 Gateway

3rd Gas lining up with your Nexus finishing

Void Ray

4th Gas

Void Ray

(be making units out of your gates - primarily Sentries)

43 Forge (for +1 attack, and maybe a defensive cannon when you move out)

54 Twilight (for Blink and +2 attack)

~67 +4 Gateways

You will move out next. You should have 6-9 Sentries by now.

OK! So let’s do a few notes/tips on the build!

If Zerg scouts you, you will have some extra money while you wait for your Cybernetics Core to finish to make a Zealot and then cancel it to fake them out.

If you are getting rushed, obviously you will want to make a Zealot.

Your Stalker will be primarily for map control and to deny scouting. You should be able to utilize it to chase down a couple lings, and deny the scouting Overlord from finding your Stargate (which will be near your wallin, as far as possible from Overlord scout paths).

The two Void Rays will be used to kill off nearby Overlords, and harass. Prioritize Drones over Queens. A good Zerg is not going to lose many (if any) Queens to just 2 Void Rays with no Phoenix backup. For the same amount of time it takes to even try to kill one, you can grab a bunch of Drone kills.

The Void Rays will be really useful for zoning out Roach based counter attacks (Zergling ones obviously aren’t as scary with your wallin up). They are also useful during the actual engagement. Just make sure you take the time to pull them back. Fully charged, they can help a great deal vs the Roaches, and it is not worth it to let them tank damage.

As I move out, I’ve been grabbing a Robo decently fast. You don’t need one right away, but sometimes Zerg rushes up to Burrow, which can be annoying.

Enjoy, and GL~~!

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