Upgrayedd

I finally got promoted to Silver league on Starcraft II. It took me 32 games, winning just slightly over half of them. I think I'm sitting at 23-19. Then I played a few games in my new bracket.  The first thing I noticed is that it did seem like the competition was a bit better.  I lost the first few quickly, before I began to adapt to the new pace of play.  It seems that Silver players are just quicker than Bronze players, flat out.  Strats didn't really seem to change, however.  Actually, if anything, they got worse.

Now, I admittedly only played a handful of games in my new bracket, but the general strat being used seemed to be all-out rush.  It didn't even matter the race.  Heck, I had one Terran opponent come in with a marines and all of their SCVs.  It was the poker equivalent of "all in".  Unfortunately for that individual, I had void rays waiting to counter-attack, and a second fortified base.  I killed all of his stuff, and his remaining force couldn't kill mine (which was still producing the entire time: it takes a long time to wipe someone out).  In any case, you have to be quick, or you wind up dead pretty quickly.  After that, I'm still trying to play fluidly, keeping my opponent scouted so that I can react to what they're building.  I'm not always the best at it, since things like a mass of marines seems particularly hard to counter early on as Protoss.

In unrelated news, rumor is that the big 4.0.1 patch is going to drop tomorrow.  With it comes the much anticipated, much dreaded, much lauded... tree changes.  The plan here at KeS is to get my preliminary Affliction tree up ASAP, then follow it with Fuu's Prot Pally, and then our others.  I'd like to get all the preliminary tree suggestions up first, hopefully get good feedback, and then modify before I update all the guides I have linked here.  It will get busy around here if the patch drops as expected.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Shards are going away.  Use 'em up now or delete them later, your call.
• Paladins who are Protection or Retribution specced will no longer be able to Cleanse Magical Debuffs (edit from comments: Cleanse itself is still a baseline spell all specs get but only a Holy Paladin can spec into Magical Debuff removal. For further information Go here!)
• Holy Power will become a new Resource for All Paladin Specs. 
• When your Toon hits level 10, you will be stuck in the tree that you put your first talent point in until 31 points are invested (True for all specs for every class)
• There will be no such thing as a DW Frost DK tank: sad day.
• A whole bunch of stuff is going to change: stats, talents, etc.  We'll figure it all out soon enough though.  Heck, I'm sure the beta folks are already well on their way.
• 4.0.1 Will not bring the New Races, World Terrain Changes (right away that is), or Level 85.

Stay tuned!

A Few Random Points

If you were going to roll a Druid in Cataclysm, what heirloom gear would you get?  What are the most important pieces, assuming you can't afford them all?  Fuu is going to help me sift through what's available tonight (she's already done the heirloom thing a few times, while I have not).  I plan to post my shopping list later.

I guess as sort of a precursor to what gear you would get: what spec would you run?  I don't have (nor have I ever had) a healer in WoW, so I'm going to try to level Resto.  Sounds crazy, I know, but I'll at least always have Fuu with me, and probably the rest of my guild as many of us plan to do the whole Worgen thing (why not?).  Anyways, my plan, then, is to try to get gear that is good for both Resto and Boomkin type specs.  I think I'd eventually like to try a Feral spec, but it probably makes sense right away that if you're going Resto, you should look to increase your SP damage as well for leveling.

With the impending currency change, what happens to heirloom gear?  I'm assuming you won't be able to get it?  Does it change to be able to be bought for gold?  What about other emblem items?  I guess I'm just assuming all that stuff goes away, though I've not really seen anything concrete on the matter.  If you have, shoot me a link!  Part of my desire to go heirloom shopping now, tonight, is that I want to make sure I'm not left out of the rain come Cataclysm.


If, like me, you were struggling with Starcraft ladder matches, I'd like to pass on another tip: Work on the "guide" achievements.  Yeah, there are guide achievements!  I don't know about you, but I didn't really even look at these at first.  After working through some of them, however, I think they provide a good framework for working on your game.  The challenges are fun and helpful.  Also, playing solo against the AI helps.  From what I've done, it seems like "hard" AI is a good approximation of a player, at least in the early stages of the game.  It seems like if you weather the initial AI charge, it slacks off later and becomes a lot easier to beat.  Maybe I'm just a late-stage kinda guy, but that's my take on it.  I believe it's really helped me to sharpen my beginning build order, and I'll generally do one quick custom game vs. the AI as a warm-up.  Just make sure you create the game from the Custom Game area in the Multi-Player tab, otherwise you don't get credit towards the achievements.  Not that the points are worth anything, it's just nice to have a visual representation of progress.

Fuu and I actually hit up the RL movies this week.  I have one thought for this: an extra, mandatory $3.50 for "3D" features is a bunch of bologna.  It's not like it was optional.  (There was no 2D offered).

We wanted to see the new Resident Evil cinematic adventure.  We're fans of the series.  Not "opening night" fans, but folks who wouldn't mind shelling out the... holy hell, $10 for a single ticket?  When did that happen?  I know, I'm totally being an old foagie here, but it was $13.50 per person to see this movie. Good thing we had just eaten at a local Mexican resataraunt - a huge, delicious meal complete with a giant bowl-like glass of frozen margarita - for approximately the same price.  Thus, we didn't have to venture near the snack bar.  They might have charged us a buck for looking.


I know, I know, the theaters aren't evil in and of themselves.  It's things like the big production companies et al.  W/e.  I'm just whining here.  And dating myself.  Wait... not dating dating myself.  You know what I mean.


The movie wasn't terrible.  It was a fun flick for fans.  There were some snicker-worthy plot points (where did this huge ugly guy with the big axe come from?).  They had fun with the 3D too, though both of us can't wait until you get actual, immersive 3D, instead of just shit popping out at you from a flat screen.  Still, for a couple who mostly spends our time holed up in front of the LCD screen at home, I would call the night out a success even with my internal price cringing.  

Where is Matt Foley When I Need Him?

Played a lot more SCII over the weekend.  I still suck at 1v1.  I swear, I've watched countless video strats, etc (Samodean, I'm looking at you, kid), and I'm doing all those things.  Doing them well actually.  At least in my opinion.  And I keep losing.  It's like the Bronze league I'm in is secretly the Diamond league.  I can't imagine what it's like up there.  I mean I'm macro'ing things, I'm scouting, I'm doing all those things you do to win... and I still lose.  What are your records/points for some of you folks in the higher leagues?  

On the complete flip side, I'm on a 7 game hot streak in 2v2 with my brother.  Neither of us can win solo, but as a team we're pretty solid.  Especially after killing all the beer in the fridge.  Perhaps I should play my 1v1 matches drunk.  We usually go dual protoss and stagger our rushing, so our opponents always have something to deal with.  It could be that we're just both awful at multi-tasking, so 2v2 suits us better.  Maybe he's carrying me too, though I seem to deliver the killing blow more often than not. 

In any case, I'm going back to the drawing board and playing the AI.  I figure I might as well work on the achievements.  Still, it's not nearly as fun.  I pretty much destroy the AI easily on both Medium and Hard (I haven't gone higher yet because I'm really just tweaking strats and build orders). 

Maybe what I need is some good motivation.  You know, a hearty pre-game speech.  "You may kill our probes, but you'll never kill our mothership!"  Or something like that.  I googled for motivational posters (love those), here's what I found:

Who doesn't like a good mommaship joke?

Maybe this is the photo of my Bronze League?

Ah ha! It is my lack of FarmVille skills...

Don't Ladder On Drugs

I've been sick for about three weeks now.  It's that time of the year for me: fall.  I'm allergic to fall.  There's no other way to describe it better.  It has nothing to do with pollen count, easterlies, or hayfever.  It has everything to do with fall, the season my body hates. 

So, fall turned and I promptly got bronchitis with a side of sinus infection.  You know, pretty standard stuff.  Other than my fall allergies, I pretty much don't get sick.  It seems this fall is worse than others too.  I don't know why.  All I know is that I haven't been able to sleep due to fits of coughing, which enticed me to finally go see a doctor in order to "get the good stuff."

Yeah, drugs.  The good stuff.  Not the illegal kind.  The prescription kind.  The kind that knock normally clean me on my ass.  Or, at least, slow me down.

Which brings me to my pro-tip of the day: Don't play Starcraft ladder matches on drugs.  It may seem like a wonderful idea, but resist.  If you're at all like me, you'll screw up your strategy every time and just feel completely incompetent.  You'll watch as all your troops get killed by some backwards strategy that should never have worked.  Then, you'll realize, you're just slow.  Slow at everything.  Even moving your mouse feels like it's slow, because you're doing everything through the haze of drugs.  Prescription drugs.  Or not, if that's your thing.  I'm not judging here.

Or maybe I'm just completely terribad at the game.  I can't say I feel very good about the direction of my ranking.  I mean, I'm in the freaking Bronze league and I don't feel like I can gain any ground.  It makes me think, what the hell are they doing in the Gold league?  I mean, you can only build so fast, and when I'm not on drugs, I'd like to think I'm pretty solid.  I know the hot keys.  I'm a good multi-tasker.

There are two things I think that are killing me.  First, I don't play nearly enough to climb.  Since ranking is based on point accumulation, there are people far above me that have lost probably 2/3rds of their games.  I mean, I'm pretty much a .500 player here.  I win as many as I lose.  It sucks to be stuck behind the people that take the shotgun approach to ladder rankings.  That is to say, they apparently just play as many games as possible and win some by sheer luck.  Or something.  Again, trying not to judge here.  Games are about fun, and if that floats your boat... I'm not going to berate you as a newb, I'm just going to expect myself to win against you. 

The second thing I think we're seeing is that people get ranked based on five initial matches, then they start to learn what the popular strategies are, so some people vastly improve out of the gate.  I'm not sure at this point in the life of the game that the rankings actually mean anything.  I guess I just don't think there is enough of a spread.  I'm not sure when/how they're going to work themselves out either, but it just seems like now being "favored" or not has absolutely no bearing over whether I should win or not.  I've played people who are "clearly favored" who seem to be pretty poor players (though maybe they were on drugs), and I've been roflstomped by players that I'm supposed to be favored over (though maybe I was on drugs). 

So I guess my consternation lies in the seeming randomness of the ladder rankings.  What do they even mean?  So intense...

Anyone else experiencing this in SCII?  What's your ranking?  How's it working for you?  Do you have to play ten matches a day to get anywhere?

Starcraft: Know Your Opponent

For those familiar with PvP in any game, the mantra "know your opponent" shouldn't be new.  Very simply put, the more you know about the person/team you're facing, the better you are able to anticipate and counter their moves.  No brainer, right?

In a Starcraft, unless you're playing against friends, you generally do not know the person(s) playing on the other side.  It is, after all, a semi-randomized matching system.  What you do know, however, is the race the other person has chosen.  If you haven't been paying attention to that on the loading screen, do it!  It could mean the difference between a win and a loss.

After playing a lot of 1v1 and 2v2 over the weekend (and netting myself a rather sweet "bronze" league ranking... yeah, I'm that awful right now), there seem to be only a handful of strategies.  At least at the lower echelons of play that I'm haunting, there are.  If you can identify the opposing race early, you can prepare pretty accurately.  Here's the breakdown of what I've been seeing.

When facing a Protoss opponent - I would say something like 90% of Protoss players right now are using the "Void Ray" tactic.  Simply put, they race the tech tree to build a quadrant of Starports early in the game, and show up with the fleet maybe 20 minutes into the game.  It's a pretty effective strategy.  With air, you minimize terrain effects (something Blizz has really lent weight to in this iteration of the game), and with the Void Ray in particular, they have a pretty solid range that will pretty much let you pick apart an opposing defense.

To win against a VR rush opponent, you're going to need good air defense.  For Terran, I've seen a guy build a whole bunch of Thors, and that worked pretty well.  Also, Vikings are a solid choice.  If you're also 'toss, you can always try to out-race them, or go with your straight air support units.  For Zerg, a mass of Hydras seem the way to go here.  A strong counter attack is key here.  If you can chop their legs out while they're trying to attack you, VR's aren't the fastest killing machines in the book, you may be able to hold off and defeat their force. 

Referring back to my last SC post, protect the probes!  If you're expecting a VR rush, then don't worry so much about blocking your base off.  Keep construction tight, and keep air defenses around your home base.

When facing a Terran opponent - I've seen two effective strategies here.  The first is a sending in a mix of ground troops.  Lot's of them.  With medivacs.  This tends to be the majority strat.  Other strategies tend to revolve around mass producing one type of unit.  I've seen Thors and Vikings used effectively as well.  In addition, a lot of Terrans try to rush with Reapers right away.  They're pretty easy to get early and can circumvent defenses. 

Since most Terrans take a ground approach, work more on your ground defenses against such an opponent.  Blocking off helps, but don't forget the ability of Reapers to jump up walls and forget to protect the rest of your base.  Marines are decently effective against air, but larger armored units will tear them up. 

When facing a Zerg opponent - The Zerg are all about fast numbers.  There's a reason we verb-ized the race to connote "speedy overwhelming death".  Look for 'lings early.  Blocking is especially effective here.  When a rush doesn't succeed, a good Zerg player will likely go for Brood Lords and Hydras.  Don't count on using cloaked units effectively against the Zerg, as they tend to have a lot of airborne detectors.

If you're successful at surviving the rush, get ready for BL's and Hydras.  Air turrets do very little against the range of the Brood Lord, you're going to need air support in the form of units.  Keep your frontal defenses strong, as Zerg are less likely than the other races to try to get in behind you.  Counter attacking is key to defeating a Zerg opponent, as they likely build a large wave at a time to try to wear you down.  If you can dual task both an attacking and defending force, you have a good chance of catching them with they're spiny pants down.

With being able to tell so much about someone just by the race, you can easily see the appeal to learn each one so that you can effectively play on "random".  Choosing random doesn't give you away, and can leave opponents especially vulnerable to rush.  When facing a random opponent, it's probably worth your while to send a worker unit to scout early, just so you know what you're facing.

These tactics, at least, are what I'm seeing from the matches I've played.  What has been effective against you?  What should we watch out for? 

Starcraft: Protect the Probes

Since I've been thoroughly enjoying Starcraft II, I thought I'd write about it a bit while we exist in this pre-expansion lull.  I'm going to talk about pretty basic, newb-ish stuff and encourage other players to comment with anything I missed.  I don't plan to do this on any given day, just randomly as the mood strikes me for as long as WoW content is lacking.

Today's "pro tip" is brought to you by my late night, drunken attempt at a 1v1 match.  For the most part, I've just been playing custom games when I do multi-player, having yet to complete the single player.  I guess I feel that I should finish the campaign before throwing myself into laddered matches and such, mostly because it makes sure you're familiar with any new stuff.  Still, it's not like they re-invented the wheel here.  There are enough old things to make a classic player feel comfortable.

So, yeah, I've been playing Vexal Tower Defense until my eyes bleed in between campaign missions.  Then, I started drinking on Saturday night and at about 2 in the morning I said: "I should skip the 50 newb matches and just try a 1v1".  I didn't completely skip them.  I tried one.  And the guy was chatting to "all" during the game.  So I'd see stuff like: "Hold on, I gotta kill this guy real quick" where "this guy" was me.  I was Protoss and he was Terran.  Fortunately for him, he didn't share any strategy hints like "zerging now".  Even so, it didn't help his cause as I sent a dozen Dark Templar in and they are pretty unstoppable if you get to them early enough.  Cloaking ftw.

In any case, with one "pwn" under my belt, I decided I was ready for the big leagues.  Well with one match and about 6 beers.  Always a good choice.

I went in as 'toss again, figuring to go with my DT strat.  Problem was, I got matched with another 'toss player.  The protoss have detector photon cannons as their main defensive implement.  With terran, it's easier to forget to build your turrets because you shouldn't need air defense right away.  With protoss, this is a moot point since they defend both air and ground.  So I adapted and decided to try and speed up the tech tree for air superiority.  Got my stargate early, and thought I was sitting pretty.  I had cannons blocking my entrance pretty solidly.  It was going well.

Then my probes started dying.  Yep, cloaked DT's were back there probing my probes.  And since this is an alien race, the probing wasn't good cop/bad cop, no, it was anal.  It's just how aliens roll.

Without workers, you're pretty well boned.  You can't do a whole lot without minerals (or crystalz as one tower defender referred to them).  I tied warping in some cannons near my nexus, but by then it was too late.  As I watched my little outpost being overrun, I had to chat with this strategic genius.  I had to know: "how did you get those guys in there?"  After all, I had thought my entrance completely sealed, equipped with detectors and everything. 

The response was as simple as it was drunkenfacepalming: "Shuttle."  You mean someone else thought of taking to the skies?  No, freaking way!  Needless to say, I immediately wished I had played at least 2 newb matches before making this guffaw.  It's not that big of a deal, but, still, I hate being "pwned", which is certainly what I was.  It wasn't a close match, it was me being dumb and him/her exploiting it.  I mean, I had just used the same tactic (albeit sans shuttle).  Dur.

We said a few more words, then "gg" and parted ways.  I was actually pleasantly surprised with the fellow.  I guess I expected to be trash talked or something, and that was not the case at all.  It was all friendly and fun.  I suppose I'll need to be careful in raising my expectation for the "new" battle.net.  After all, there is still plenty of ignorant e-trashing in TD matches.  Heaven forbid someone new try to play one of those.  At the same time, there were an equal number of people trying to be helpful.  Maybe my memories of the original battle.net are colored, but I think we're trending in the right direction.

Short version of the tip: Protect your workers.  Put the token detector back near your base, especially when playing Protoss.  Do this, and ye shall not feel as newbish as I.