Starcraft 2 Player List

[Rostum]

Hey,

I've been playing SC2 again for a few months now and am looking for more people to practice with. If anyone is interested, I'd like to start up a list of players here. So just give your username and player code (or your battle.net email if you want), and what server you are on.

NA:
Rostum: Rostum - 444
Vivi22: Vivi - 276
JKTrix: JKTrix - 792
Lionx: Lionx - 512

[Slothy]

I've actually been playing quite a bit the last few months as well. Mostly cooperative and single player, though some 1v1 at the end of last season. I've been wanting to play some more as well so I wouldn't mind some practice. I'm in the North America region: Vivi - 276

[Rostum]

Sweet, added to list. Also I'll add you later on SC2.

[Slothy]

Hmm, seems we may be the only ones who either play SC2 or want to play some 1v1.

Just curious but have you ever seen Day[9]'s video series on Starcraft 2? Day[9]TV

I found it a few months back after watching some of the MLG finals earlier this year (which actually brought me back into playing SC2), and I've learned quite a bit from them. In fact, I think I can actually credit watching those with greatly upping my game, almost before I even played one again. I have to say I like how the competitive game has developed over the last year. Feels like there's a lot more depth and robustness to the different strategies out there.

[Rostum]

Yeah it's a shame no one else will reply! > People feel free to talk about SC2 in general as well!

I like Day9's commentating at MLG, but I didn't realise he had a bunch of videos. I'll check them out thanks! I play Terran and my builds are fairly ordinary and predictable, but I still manage to win for the most part - just MMM and banshee harrassement. I have to laugh at a lot of people trying to do reaper harrassement though, it's far too easy to repel and they are generally slow at it (not to mention wasting all that gas).

[Slothy]

My builds are pretty ordinary as well to be honest, though when I play against CPU opponents I like to experiment to see what I can get away with building as fast as possible. The computer doesn't really miss much in the early game so their first attack in co-op or single games can be devastating if you don't prepare properly. Especially when playing on Very Hard. I find it can be good practice for fending off early attacks, whereas if I see someone expanding or any other signs early harass isn't coming then I can relax and macro more.

But anyway, the nice thing about fairly ordinary builds is that instead of just trying to focus on some weird out of left field play that may or may not work, you get used to the fundamentals: expanding, macroing well, unit control in battles, positioning, timings, and all of that good stuff that helps to build you up as a better player. Especially in the lower ranks like Bronze-Gold, being good at that stuff and knowing how to fight off the weird funky things that less skilled players do can get the victory more often than not.

I also have to laugh at the idea of Reaper harass. It's one of those things that if you catch the person sleeping it can do some real early damage, but if it fails it leaves you really vulnerable. You spend a lot of time building the barracks, getting the tech lab and the better part of a minute just building the reaper, in addition to using the gas as you mentioned. You can pretty much bet that someone going for early Reaper harass is going to be low on Marines, Marauders or both, and they won't be getting tanks very early. I play Protoss myself so I wouldn't be trying it anyway, but I just couldn't see myself resorting to it. Like you said, it's easy to defend, and if you get it out early enough for it to have a chance of working then it puts you way behind in the early game. It might be worth it if the distance to your opponents base is short, but even then I'd probably skip it and look to expand earlier instead.

[Pike]

I've been playing Starcraft since... 1999? 2000? Sometime around then. I sort of fell out of it, though. I mess around in SC2 sometimes but mostly I just play it as a graphical upgrade of the original; I hardly use any of the new units or anything.

I don't really follow any of the tourneys or streams or whatever the Korean kids are into these days. Starcraft, to me, has always been about just derping around with the AI, so that's probably what I'll continue to do.

(SPOILER)Once Huxley and I played Brood War several years back; it was a three hour long stalemate and we each took over exactly half of the map and then turtled until we ran out of resources. Then we turtled some more. It was glorious

[Slothy]

Once Huxley and I played Brood War several years back; it was a three hour long stalemate and we each took over exactly half of the map and then turtled until we ran out of resources. Then we turtled some more. It was glorious

I used to play a lot of shared base games in Brood War and pretty much all of them went like that, except worse since you had 50,000 minerals per mineral node.

[Pike]

Ahhh, good ol' memories of Shared Base games and the way you'd get those "Max units created" errors and then Valkyries would quit working because of it.

And then of course there were always those $$$$FASTEST MAP EVER$$$$ games... good times.

The map Huxley and I played on for our glorious stalemate game was Lost Temple. Such a good map...

...well now I feel like playing Starcraft.

[Slothy]

I felt like playing Starcraft. Then it crashed a few levels in and refuses to connect to Battlenet to update.

But yeah, I remember the map maxed messages very well. That didn't used to happen and the game was a laggy mess by the end. Then they put that in there and now instead of a laggy mess, we had a laggy mess where Valkyries didn't work and one of your teammates inevitably didn't build a damn thing. Fun times.

[Slothy]

Well, I finally got my placement match for this season out of the way. I personally hate the placement matches because I hate losing and want to do well, but always seem to end up paired with an opponent who is clearly better than me and just get the crap kicked out of me and stuck in the silver league anyway. I actually tend to get a bit of a case of nerves with the placement matches, which might just be from not playing a lot of 1v1. I know how to win, just don't have the practice to execute it. Granted, this time around I had a hard fought battle as Protoss vs. Terran for almost 40 minutes, but by the end he was harrassing me from too many different directions and wore me down while preventing me from expanding to a third base. I was trying to keep him from expanding as well but I never managed to get any colossus out to deal with his MMM army (largely my fault. I thought I had built a robotics bay but had really completely forgotten it and was fighting tooth and nail to not die when I really needed to be getting colossus out), so he just kept draining my resources as I suffered bigger losses than him in just about every skirmish.

I'm not sure I'm really enjoying playing Protoss right now though. It hasn't felt quite right since I've been playing a lot of Terran/Random in cooperative mode so I think I'll be playing Terran for a while at least and see how it goes. I did play a second game right after my placement match and went Terran against a Zerg player and won quite handily with an MMM army backed up with tanks and some Vikings. My favourite part was when I had him pushed back to his main and natural expansion and he built 7-8 spine crawlers in front of his expansion. So I scanned his main, saw no spore cannons and said screw that. Loaded up the medivacs and dropped right in his main to completely finish him.

I think I'll have to go back and watch Terran week from the Day[9] dailies though. I have a rough idea of unit matchups and some builds and strategies, but I haven't put the time into learning it that I was for Protoss.

[Rostum]

Yeah, Terran MMM is pretty effective in the lower leagues. I still haven't played a proper league match yet, and am scared to, lol.

I have real gripe with the Very Hard AI though, it feels like it's almost not worth using to practice. All they do is bum rush you at the earliest time possible, and I'm finding it rather difficult to hold on.

[Slothy]

I probably wouldn't even try the very hard AI to be honest. I've played against it in cooperative mode before and that really is just about all it does. Unless at least one of your teammates cheeses with a very early cannon rush or something it is nearly impossible to hold off the first attack. And even if they do cheese your odds might still just be 50/50. And unlike lower level AI's, after that first attack, they just keep massing up and coming at you faster than I actually thought was possible, which is bad because you're probably half dead and desperately trying to expand after the first attack so you can gain some ground.walling off with some early siege tanks, or rushing to get as many stalkers and sentries as you can right away are about the only thing Terran and Protoss can do short of cheesing, which I don't like since it can leave you unable to recover if it fails.

And I hear ya on the league matches. I actually get so nervous when I do them that my hands are a bit shaky at the start. I'm not really sure why they make me so nervous, but once I'm in them I kind of calm down a bit, and then when I finish and I'm finally placed it's quite a sense of relief, and I realize it wasn't really that bad anyway. The second game is always much easier. Just go in accepting that you will lose and probably lose a lot and it's not so bad. Keep in mind that you're still learning so your goal isn't even really to win yet. It's to improve now so you can win later. Play a bunch of games, see how you do, and when there are some where you don't know where you went wrong or how your opponent did something, save the replay and go over it later to see if you can figure out how to fix what went wrong.

[Lionx]

You know i would play...but my cpu is in trouble for quite some time..and still an ongoing process..=/ Still my SN is Lionx as you should know

As for Protoss, you really have to either go early Blink Stalker aggression with good Probe scouting, or you sit back and get your Robo Facility and pump that Observer out to see what the Terran player is doing. In general i would get more Immortals and Collosi if i am fighting MMM(very likely matchup since Marauder is so cost efficient). Chargelots are also recommended. Stargate not so much because Marine is so good against most Stargate units used for early harass. If the map is huge, a FFE build might be good to get the funds needed in anticipation of MMM from most average Terran players.

Very Hard is good to learn how to hold off early rushes and expanding correctly. Outside of that, I wouldn't get nuts over them.

The feeling of shakiness is attributed to the same nervousness as Tournament jitters in any said game. This is attributed to the fact that in 1v1, you have no one to fall back on but yourself, and therefore if you lose its all your fault. Only experience and familiarity with the game through alot of research and playing can get rid of this. The mindset has to change in order for this to not be an issue...the pros already know the builds, the execution, flow/game sense so well that stuff like this is not an issue. So therefore they only focus on the opponent's head. Its hard to put into words, but if you are just so in tune with the game and are 'in that zone'...you will kinda know what i mean.

Digressing a little, but consider watching this if you feel outplayed or the opponent is 'too good': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSspT...er_profilepage

This guy was the 2nd best SFII player back in the day (uncontested) but he talks across alot of games. Alot of good insight if you are willing to spend the time to watch.

[Rostum]

Hurry up and get your PC fixed, yo! Also give us your name and user code and I'll add it to the list.

Sometimes I feel so boss stomping on a newbie in practice league, and then watching the replay I feel like a real douche.