Life In 19x19

Arghhhhhhhhhh PvT is driving me insane. I still can't believe I make this 20-kyu mistake.

My PvZ's been getting better, but I'm still working on how to handle aggressive ling pressure on Blistering Sands. Once the rocks are out it becomes quite annoying. I watched HuK's stream where he went 3-gate forge to expansion which was interesting but his opponent didn't put that much pressure on him with lings.

PvP is just dumb. It's nothing but a 4-gate derpfest. A good, aggressive 4-gate will absolutely wreck any robo or FE build, and will only really fail to either a K4G (another all-in) or very good 1-2 CB'd gate aggression from what I've seen. It's pretty sad to hear people beginning to call it standard when it's just such a lame build. Of course, I'd love to be proven wrong about this though (which is the point of this post) - if anyone has any pro-level replay (current patch) where an aggressive 4-gate (specifications: 1 gas, gates built at 24, 16 on minerals, 1 zealot + 6 stalker push in < 6 min.) gets taken out by a robo build (e.g: 3-gate robo) or, even better, to someone who expands and still manages to defend the push, that'd be great. Of course, if Time is still lurking here and would offer insight on it that'd be great too .

I'm so not qualified to comment on any of this. I will say some maps, especially maps with destructable back doors, seem to favour ling agression more than other, more air oriented maps. It's gotten to where I really prefer things like metalopolis and lost temple, because at least then I know what the zerg are going to try. Securing burning sands makes me cry, against zerg or terrans.

As for PVP..
I am still only playing gold players, so all my ideas are probably wrong, but I've had some good success with a 2 Warp, Stargate, TC chargelot/VR build. But, my opponents generally wait until about 8 minutes to attack, so maybe that gives me more time, and at my level, micro isn't so great, so the 2 void rays I can have by 8 minutes really clean up.

Build order is something like..
9pylon
12gate
16p
16->when gate finishes->Cyber
16->zealot
21 Gate
as cyber finishes, stalker, and research gateway
24ish, gas
26ish, pylon, stargate
zealots, workers, pylons, and a void ray as money makes available, void ray should be affordable just as the stargate finishes if I haven't overstacked my nexus.
as the void ray is building, drop the twilight council, and start researching charge, chrono boosting it repeatedly. When the void ray finishes, push another out with CB. Chargelots kill stalkers, Void rays kill immortals and zealots. Weak against airforce builds, so I like to run a chargelot out ahead to see if they've been spying on me and I need to build stalkers. Once the second void ray is out, I usually drop some money on expanding to 2 base while making my push.

Pushing early to chargelot should take out early stalker agression, and VRs eat gateway units for breakfast. At my level, it's giving me some surprising success, but I don't know how well it would hold up against platinum and diamond play. I met a clever silver who had gone hard into blink stalkers who ran me around the map a little, but, if I'm careful not to let the stalkers stand on a cliff and shoot at the void rays, it goes ok even against blinkies.

I'm not terribly fond of this build because it's a fairly blind build. No observers means that if they go early robo, they can scout and go really hard into stalker zealot mix, or pop out some phoenix, and try to out airforce me. I've once been surprised by a dark templar back door drop too, since they scouted my lack of robo.

But, against most 4 gaters, at my level, it has cleaned up, so it's what I've been focusing on.

Funnily, the Liquidpedia claims that PVP is all about the collosus.

I really think the best counter for protoss is to be playing terran.

Araban wrote:Arghhhhhhhhhh PvT is driving me insane. I still can't believe I make this 20-kyu mistake.

Oops!

Also taking this time to say I've never casted an EMP. lol! For serious!

I have used a nuke in TvT to break a tank line. He unseiged and retreated, then I rushed in, and then.... The nuke landed on me! Ahahahaha fail!

Fun Triva: FrozenArbiter is a former go player

But unfortunately the current Jinro[4d] on KGS isn't him. Would have been really impressed with a player being top at SC2 and 4d in go.

On a winning streak, again. I'm worried, though.. it feels more like I'm winning because my opponents suck (bad macro, slow builds, predictable unit choice) than because I am doing anything right.

How many of your wins do you just accept that your opponent is going to make a huge glaring mistake and you're going to roll them?

Granted, 500 games ago, my game was so full of errors I couldn't have punished those mistakes, but I'd rather have a game that is back and forth, edge of my seat, with a desperate push to win, than the methodical destructions I've been handing out today.

On second thought, no, never mind, keep pairing me with the golds who can't build anything but zerglings and roaches.

I like the boost to my rank.

Maybe I'll make gold soon.

yoyoma wrote:

Araban wrote:Arghhhhhhhhhh PvT is driving me insane. I still can't believe I make this 20-kyu mistake.

Oops!

Also taking this time to say I've never casted an EMP. lol! For serious!

One day I decided to just start going for ghosts in TvP even though I wasn't comfortable with it. I have a half dozen games or so where our two armies meet, I'm maybe 15 food behind out of 80 something, and I have a single ghost with 75 energy and lots of marine maurader with stim, and I just end up steam rolling the protoss army. Like it's not even a close battle.

EMP is just soooo good. It's easily on par with psionic storm in my mind. Zerg doesn't really have any stomp spells like that, which makes me sad :'(

Numsgil wrote:One day I decided to just start going for ghosts in TvP even though I wasn't comfortable with it. I have a half dozen games or so where our two armies meet, I'm maybe 15 food behind out of 80 something, and I have a single ghost with 75 energy and lots of marine maurader with stim, and I just end up steam rolling the protoss army. Like it's not even a close battle.

EMP is just soooo good. It's easily on par with psionic storm in my mind. Zerg doesn't really have any stomp spells like that, which makes me sad :'(

Used it for the first time just awhile ago! o/

I'm golden.

Weird to be losing games again. Have to remind myself that it's allowed.

CSamurai wrote:I'm golden.

Weird to be losing games again. Have to remind myself that it's allowed.

Awesome, the karmic Starcraft Gods have clearly come to their senses! Congrats Platinum just round the corner now

CSamurai wrote:I'm golden.

Weird to be losing games again. Have to remind myself that it's allowed.

I take a trip for a week, and the world is turned on its head. Congratulations! Maybe I should try bullying you into practicing with me again. =D

Chew Terr wrote:

CSamurai wrote:I'm golden.

Weird to be losing games again. Have to remind myself that it's allowed.

I take a trip for a week, and the world is turned on its head. Congratulations! Maybe I should try bullying you into practicing with me again. =D

Would love to play, but don't think I'm any better than I was.

Amusingly, just as I was promoted, my illness (A sinus infection/cough) had a fun little resurgence that left me rather loopy. I ended up playing anyway, and losing a lot, so we'll see if I can recover any of that lost ground any time soon.

Trying not to worry about rank. The games are at least fun, even when I'm losing, though I was startled by the amount of cheese in the upper golds. All cannon rushes and the like. On the first day of my illness/losing streak, I was cheesed 4 times in a row by 4 different players. 2 cannon rushers, a zealot rush, and a 6 pool. All of them were gold or platinum, 3 of them beat me silly. I guess that's the difference between gold cheese and bronze cheese. Gold cheese works.

For my love of statistics and rating systems I made this table comparing SC2 leagues to KGS and USCF (US Chess) ratings.


I took the histogram of KGS and UCSF ratings from here: http://senseis.xmp.net/?RatingHistogramComparisons And applied it to the assumed 20% split of leagues in SC2.

A couple observations: The vast range of skills that the Bronze and Diamond leagues are put into perspective here. Low diamond starting at 1k? Imaging a 1k vs 9d in even match? (lawl) Same thing for Bronze, 30k to 11k is quite a stretch.

Also regarding the difficulty of CSamuri's experience, I can see how it would be hard for a rating system to determine the difference between an 11kyu (high Bronze) and a 7kyu (low Gold) for a game like SC2. For a perfect information game like Go this a 4 stone difference at that level is easy to detect, but SC2 has a much larger randomness/luck factor. Especially in lower leagues where players can easily be blind countering each other randomly. So for SC2 the equivalent skill difference is much harder to measure/rate.

yoyoma wrote:Also regarding the difficulty of CSamuri's experience, I can see how it would be hard for a rating system to determine the difference between an 11kyu (high Bronze) and a 7kyu (low Gold) for a game like SC2. For a perfect information game like Go this a 4 stone difference at that level is easy to detect, but SC2 has a much larger randomness/luck factor. Especially in lower leagues where players can easily be blind countering each other randomly. So for SC2 the equivalent skill difference is much harder to measure/rate.

If I felt like I was low gold I could understand it, however, as I play I've come to believe I'm not. I'm mid to high gold at least, so it's more like the difference between 5/4k and 11k. Even if what has happened is that the lower ranks add a certain amount of randomness, the system is slightly broken.

However, I do have an explanation for the problem.

Reviewing my games, I'm highly susceptible to early game pressure by protoss and terrans. Rush builds (Friekin zealot rushes) can make my best builds look pokey and slow. I invest heavily in economy, and, for a great while, early expanded every game. It taught me a bit of a lesson about balance, though, so it improved my game overall.

Rush games, that is, builds that are all or nothing rushes like zealot rush builds or agressive 4 gate, or the like, tend to be executed a lot at lower skill levels. The players lack the capability to play longer games, so they try to rush and win on the first push every time.

So, when playing more temperate players, who are content to try to match me build for build, I fare well, but when playing highly agressive players, who try to overwhelm me early, I fare poorly.

Which puts me in the odd position of winning against golds, and losing against bronzies.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that you don't see high level rushers. I've had quite a bit of cheese and rushes, particularly from terrans, but at gold, you still see a lot more solid build, solid play.

I had to learn to beat the rush, learn to scout and build a defense and macro up under fire, before I could get out of bronze, even though my play was better than most bronze.

My play is better now than it was a few weeks ago, and I hope to keep improving, but I think I'm about where I belong, squarely in gold. My points/ladder position are rediculous, another broken signal of player skill, but I guess that's to be expected for 800 games. I'm looking forward to that 500 1v1 wins as protoss acheivement, which should come around any day now..

CSamurai wrote:

yoyoma wrote:Also regarding the difficulty of CSamuri's experience, I can see how it would be hard for a rating system to determine the difference between an 11kyu (high Bronze) and a 7kyu (low Gold) for a game like SC2. For a perfect information game like Go this a 4 stone difference at that level is easy to detect, but SC2 has a much larger randomness/luck factor. Especially in lower leagues where players can easily be blind countering each other randomly. So for SC2 the equivalent skill difference is much harder to measure/rate.

If I felt like I was low gold I could understand it, however, as I play I've come to believe I'm not. I'm mid to high gold at least, so it's more like the difference between 5/4k and 11k. Even if what has happened is that the lower ranks add a certain amount of randomness, the system is slightly broken.

However, I do have an explanation for the problem.

Reviewing my games, I'm highly susceptible to early game pressure by protoss and terrans. Rush builds (Friekin zealot rushes) can make my best builds look pokey and slow. I invest heavily in economy, and, for a great while, early expanded every game. It taught me a bit of a lesson about balance, though, so it improved my game overall.

Rush games, that is, builds that are all or nothing rushes like zealot rush builds or agressive 4 gate, or the like, tend to be executed a lot at lower skill levels. The players lack the capability to play longer games, so they try to rush and win on the first push every time.

So, when playing more temperate players, who are content to try to match me build for build, I fare well, but when playing highly agressive players, who try to overwhelm me early, I fare poorly.

Which puts me in the odd position of winning against golds, and losing against bronzies.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that you don't see high level rushers. I've had quite a bit of cheese and rushes, particularly from terrans, but at gold, you still see a lot more solid build, solid play.

I had to learn to beat the rush, learn to scout and build a defense and macro up under fire, before I could get out of bronze, even though my play was better than most bronze.

My play is better now than it was a few weeks ago, and I hope to keep improving, but I think I'm about where I belong, squarely in gold. My points/ladder position are rediculous, another broken signal of player skill, but I guess that's to be expected for 800 games. I'm looking forward to that 500 1v1 wins as protoss acheivement, which should come around any day now..

That's what I meant by blind counters. The people who rush you were blind countering your style because it wasn't balanced. This sort of thing increases randomness of results. And some other guy is bunkering up every game and going to carriers and beating the guy doing the 1-base allin.

Hey guys, Usagi here.

I've decided to stop playing Go for a while to focus on my Starcraft II. Actually you may have guessed something like this since I haven't been on KGS playing KIL or my Alpha league games this month.

So I decided to try my hand at casting. My first attempt is somewhat rough but my second (which I can't upload to youtube since it contains copyrighted music -- anyone know an alternate source?) and third (especially my third) are where I finally fix the audio problems and try my hand at overlays and such. For my fourth and fifth I will be working using a teleprompter but I haven't had time to edit the raw footage yet. Anyways check out usagistarcraft live cast #3! Feedback welcome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWf9SpdcDLU

don't forget to select HD - you can watch it in 720p ^^

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