Staredit Network > Forums > SC2 Melee > Topic: Protips
Protips
May 4 2011, 4:44 am
By: Dungeon-Master  

Jun 2 2011, 11:05 pm Roy Post #21

An artist's depiction of an Extended Unit Death

Quote from name:Cardinal
I guess just do whatever works for you, and since this is a pro-tip thread here's one for you:
If something is in your mineral line, you can put all your workers on Hold Position. It'll force whatever is harassing you to require to be manually told to target individual workers (provided you have a military unit nearby). This has saved me in a few lol-lol-lol situations when some douchebag would warp-prism drop 4 zealots in my main super early on and all I would have is a couple stalkers. He just A-Moves to the mineral line, but when the probes are on hold position, the zealots can't path through them and will try attack the stalkers due to the AI targetting priority - resulting in useless Zealots.
On a similar note, if you're trying to damage the mineral line, you can move units into it and hold position to target the workers without worrying about your units chasing aggressors. This works especially well with a group of Zerglings.




Jun 3 2011, 2:06 am Tempz Post #22



@Cardinal yea now that you mention it i noticed it alot more...



None.

Jun 3 2011, 2:17 am NicholasBeige Post #23



Quote from Roy
Quote from name:Cardinal
I guess just do whatever works for you, and since this is a pro-tip thread here's one for you:
If something is in your mineral line, you can put all your workers on Hold Position. It'll force whatever is harassing you to require to be manually told to target individual workers (provided you have a military unit nearby). This has saved me in a few lol-lol-lol situations when some douchebag would warp-prism drop 4 zealots in my main super early on and all I would have is a couple stalkers. He just A-Moves to the mineral line, but when the probes are on hold position, the zealots can't path through them and will try attack the stalkers due to the AI targetting priority - resulting in useless Zealots.
On a similar note, if you're trying to damage the mineral line, you can move units into it and hold position to target the workers without worrying about your units chasing aggressors. This works especially well with a group of Zerglings.
True dat.

If you have vision of his mineral line with Zerglings on the way - and you know they can get in there un-contested - or if you have a few seconds to pay attention with the harass, hold shift+a spam waypoints on the workers. It's probably the best way to guarantee worker kills and works for any units you willing to sacrifice for the worker kills. A-move works wonders though, assuming your opponent doesn't know the hold position trick :)



None.

Jun 3 2011, 2:40 am TiKels Post #24



Cecil isn't just masters, he's top 600 in the US the last I checked.



"If a topic that clearly interest noone needs to be closed to underline the "we don't want this here" message, is up to debate."

-NudeRaider

Jul 9 2011, 7:56 pm CecilSunkure Post #25



Quote from name:Cardinal
Quote from Tempz
Holy crap that's good micro 0_o
lol r u srs?

He was controlling on hellion against players who didn't seem to know they had Zerglings. And the game lasted 16 minutes and none of the Zerg players had speed? Half of the time the Zerglings were just on a-move and idling (you can tell because they would follow the hellion a certain distance and then return back to where they were idling...) And I doubt that was player control forcing that 'attack and back' manouvre since that's just retarded - apm would've been better spent surrounding the hellion or splitting your lings.

Well, Cecil. I don't really disagree - it's just that everyone goes on about 'macro' as this imba uber leet technique that will elevate you all the way into Diamond or whatever. Maybe I'm just speaking from my personal experience here, but in any melee 1v1 game I find myself in, the game always comes down to positioning in a battle, controlling certain chokes / areas, getting good concave/surface area or a surround on your opponent, baiting and kiting units and using distractionary attacks (such as: lololol nydus in your main! by the way armies punching you in the face now as you look elsewhere).

And trust me I don't want to sound cocky when I say this, but if macro is all it takes to be elevated from 'lower-level' game play then I must be 'elevated' - since about 90% of my games come down to stuff I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

I'm not discounting that 'macro' is a large part of SC2 and obviously in any given 'level' of gameplay, if your opponent is ahead of you in harvesters/income - you're generally behind. And then each race has it's own macro-specific mechanics: such as dropping mules, adding sufficient barracks/factories, getting add-ons when appropriate... spitting larva, spreading creep, scouting with overlords, expanding... warpgate cycling, chronoboosting forges/robo facilities, knowing when to boost our probes / when to focus on upgrades etc... then the obvious things like don't get supply blocked, use decent hotkeys, learn timings etc.

But what happens to people when the inevitable 10 pool happens? Or that reaper harass gets a few worker kills? How do you react to a baneling bust? Blue flame hellion drop? Siege tank contain? warp prism zealots? Dark templars? Fast bunker rush? proxy gate ways that you've only just scouted? cannon rush etc? Your macro won't help you one bit if you panic and get destroyed. Macro takes a good 10 minutes of game time to develop (probably not wording this properly), but 20 workers can die in a split second if you're not scouting (ie: investing time in doing non-macro related things) - again didn't really phrase this well, the jist of it was that you can lose 30 workers in <5 seconds if you don't realise your opponent is into that kind of thing. I don't know - would you count scouting as part of macro or micro? :s

I am by no means a top level player, lol that's laughable me even feeling the need to say that - but regardless I just typed 5 paragraphs on starcraft 2 and that makes me feel cocky. :3

I guess just do whatever works for you, and since this is a pro-tip thread here's one for you:
If something is in your mineral line, you can put all your workers on Hold Position. It'll force whatever is harassing you to require to be manually told to target individual workers (provided you have a military unit nearby). This has saved me in a few lol-lol-lol situations when some douchebag would warp-prism drop 4 zealots in my main super early on and all I would have is a couple stalkers. He just A-Moves to the mineral line, but when the probes are on hold position, the zealots can't path through them and will try attack the stalkers due to the AI targetting priority - resulting in useless Zealots.

Most people would either keep their probes mining, or make them all attack the zealots - or run away. Each of these options results in losing more probes or losing more mining time :3 (which means his harass was super effective).
Lets have some lessons. I'll teach you some proper protoss macro, and this way you'll be able to see the difference in play. The difference between good macro and bad macro is actually ridiculously huge and the leading cause of players staying below master's league. I can try and show you the things you aren't quite yet noticing in your play, and tell you how to improve them. Interested?



None.

Jul 10 2011, 4:41 pm BiOAtK Post #26



Quote from CecilSunkure
Quote from name:Cardinal
Quote from Tempz
Holy crap that's good micro 0_o
lol r u srs?

He was controlling on hellion against players who didn't seem to know they had Zerglings. And the game lasted 16 minutes and none of the Zerg players had speed? Half of the time the Zerglings were just on a-move and idling (you can tell because they would follow the hellion a certain distance and then return back to where they were idling...) And I doubt that was player control forcing that 'attack and back' manouvre since that's just retarded - apm would've been better spent surrounding the hellion or splitting your lings.

Well, Cecil. I don't really disagree - it's just that everyone goes on about 'macro' as this imba uber leet technique that will elevate you all the way into Diamond or whatever. Maybe I'm just speaking from my personal experience here, but in any melee 1v1 game I find myself in, the game always comes down to positioning in a battle, controlling certain chokes / areas, getting good concave/surface area or a surround on your opponent, baiting and kiting units and using distractionary attacks (such as: lololol nydus in your main! by the way armies punching you in the face now as you look elsewhere).

And trust me I don't want to sound cocky when I say this, but if macro is all it takes to be elevated from 'lower-level' game play then I must be 'elevated' - since about 90% of my games come down to stuff I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

I'm not discounting that 'macro' is a large part of SC2 and obviously in any given 'level' of gameplay, if your opponent is ahead of you in harvesters/income - you're generally behind. And then each race has it's own macro-specific mechanics: such as dropping mules, adding sufficient barracks/factories, getting add-ons when appropriate... spitting larva, spreading creep, scouting with overlords, expanding... warpgate cycling, chronoboosting forges/robo facilities, knowing when to boost our probes / when to focus on upgrades etc... then the obvious things like don't get supply blocked, use decent hotkeys, learn timings etc.

But what happens to people when the inevitable 10 pool happens? Or that reaper harass gets a few worker kills? How do you react to a baneling bust? Blue flame hellion drop? Siege tank contain? warp prism zealots? Dark templars? Fast bunker rush? proxy gate ways that you've only just scouted? cannon rush etc? Your macro won't help you one bit if you panic and get destroyed. Macro takes a good 10 minutes of game time to develop (probably not wording this properly), but 20 workers can die in a split second if you're not scouting (ie: investing time in doing non-macro related things) - again didn't really phrase this well, the jist of it was that you can lose 30 workers in <5 seconds if you don't realise your opponent is into that kind of thing. I don't know - would you count scouting as part of macro or micro? :s

I am by no means a top level player, lol that's laughable me even feeling the need to say that - but regardless I just typed 5 paragraphs on starcraft 2 and that makes me feel cocky. :3

I guess just do whatever works for you, and since this is a pro-tip thread here's one for you:
If something is in your mineral line, you can put all your workers on Hold Position. It'll force whatever is harassing you to require to be manually told to target individual workers (provided you have a military unit nearby). This has saved me in a few lol-lol-lol situations when some douchebag would warp-prism drop 4 zealots in my main super early on and all I would have is a couple stalkers. He just A-Moves to the mineral line, but when the probes are on hold position, the zealots can't path through them and will try attack the stalkers due to the AI targetting priority - resulting in useless Zealots.

Most people would either keep their probes mining, or make them all attack the zealots - or run away. Each of these options results in losing more probes or losing more mining time :3 (which means his harass was super effective).
Lets have some lessons. I'll teach you some proper protoss macro, and this way you'll be able to see the difference in play. The difference between good macro and bad macro is actually ridiculously huge and the leading cause of players staying below master's league. I can try and show you the things you aren't quite yet noticing in your play, and tell you how to improve them. Interested?
I am, if this offer extends to me! o.O



None.

Aug 9 2011, 3:21 pm Fisty Post #27



tl;dr all the other suggestions, but Day9 is doing Zerg week right now, and he is bringing in different pros to talk about their gamestyle (EX: Destiney's ZvP, which is god-tier)

EDIT: LOL. Just noticed how damn old this is.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 27 2011, 5:48 pm by Fisty.



None.

Aug 31 2011, 4:14 am BlueWolf Post #28



Alright, so I was in bronze for the longest time. I would watch pros play, and the only thing I learned from that were some good counters, try to do something at all times, flanking, and some tactics each race uses.

I'm a zerg player, and I would always go 14 pool into fast lings then expand when possible. I would stay in my base at all times (Which is bad for zerg, since they are a reactive race.) That was until I started to practice some build orders. I worked on Idras 14 expand, 13 pool + Extractor into fast roaches. I was winning all my games, except to cheese. If I scout an opponent Fast Expanding, I go for a third base and go ling/muta/infestor. I'm only in silver, so I'm still learning.

About macro, if I don't have my bases well saturated (~25 drones per base) then I can't rebuild fast enough to hold off the counter. Also, as a zerg, I have to make sure to always inject larva.

At the moment, I'm only having trouble with Terran's Thor/tank builds...



None.

Sep 2 2011, 3:00 am ClansAreForGays Post #29



Well there's thor builds, and there's tank builds, but there isn't a thor+tank build...

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 2 2011, 3:39 am by ClansAreForGays.




Sep 2 2011, 3:25 am Decency Post #30



Lategame it's pretty common, not really a build per se, just a strategy.



None.

Oct 7 2011, 7:58 pm Dungeon-Master Post #31



Quote from ClansAreForGays
Well there's thor builds, and there's tank builds, but there isn't a thor+tank build...
Trust me, at silver, there's Thor Tank builds.



None.

Nov 15 2011, 10:57 pm BeDazed Post #32



That is such a waste of gas.



None.

Nov 21 2011, 5:02 am FatalException Post #33



Saw some thor-tank out of mech terrans at MLG. Dump the minerals on blue flame hellions and zerg melts, provided that they don't get up to infestor broodlord.



None.

Nov 22 2011, 5:11 pm ClansAreForGays Post #34



Quote from FatalException
Saw some thor-tank out of mech terrans at MLG. Dump the minerals on blue flame hellions and zerg melts, provided that they don't get up to infestor broodlord.
Just mass roaches...




Dec 14 2011, 3:21 am ImagoDeo Post #35



Quote from ClansAreForGays
Quote from FatalException
Saw some thor-tank out of mech terrans at MLG. Dump the minerals on blue flame hellions and zerg melts, provided that they don't get up to infestor broodlord.
Just mass roaches...
Useless vs tank slow push with scan for anti-burrowmove.



None.

Dec 15 2011, 11:01 pm ClansAreForGays Post #36



We're talking about a game where the armies are around 100 since it's before last-tier units (broods/bcs). And we're talking about a terran who has forgone m/m for hells. AND We're talking about a terran with both tank and thor. So his sprinkling of tanks will not even handle a simple advancing roach studder-step. I get it to work 40% of the time on tank+rine+maruad balls. It would work %100 of the time against thor+tank+hel.

Of course Z typically forgoes roaches in TvZ, and gets bane+ling+muta(disgusting). So yes, this crushes typical zerg.




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