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So far I have seen very little dedicated cheese builds on the beta streams, besides rushing with the new or enhanced LotV units, like ravager rushes. Yesterday on the Late Game talk show the topic was briefly picked up with Destiny making a very good remark, that figuring out cheeses is very important because for all we know certain rushes might be completely overpowered. But the players there agreed that they encountered cheeses rarely or not at all so far.
I want to bring this topic up because with the 12worker start the early game dynamics are fundamentally changed, even if we disregarded the other LotV changes and additions. Take this example of a relatively weak HotS ZvT allin: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/478098-tangscs-nice-zvt-all-in
Without even playing LotV, I can tell you that you can copy this build nearly the exact same way as a Zerg. But the HotS Terran defense against it cannot be replicated in the same way. The Zerg can still open 13/13, 14/14 or 15/15 of the 12 worker start, but the Terran can not start a 12rax without having a 10depot finished. The Terran defense is delayed by at least the build time of the first supply depot which is 30seconds. For all we know, the Zerg standard opening in LotV could be a 14/14 baneling bust against Terran. Yup, I said standard opening. 2rax was a standard opening for almost one year in WoL TvZ, 1base hellion rushing for almost 2years and HotS PvP still ends in 1base vs 1base more often than not. Even if it is unlikely to happen, it is not impossible that the metagame forces or rewards aggressive 1basing as standard opening. To bring in a different example from a different game: anyone who was around through the wild days of Starbow might remember how through game changes, the openings could differ wildly from one day to another. One day macro 2gate zealot pressure was nearly unstopable for Zerg, or 1base reactored Vultures were running rampant forcing 1basish hydralisk reactions, the other day zerg could open 3hatch before pool without much risk. I think I do not need to tell anybody what a huge difference that makes for balancing a midgame zerg timing attack. Or just imagine HotS ZvT without hellion openings. Terrans would be royally screwed without it and the whole early game ZvT would have to be rebalanced.
So my complaint right now is that we are discussing units and will eventually balance them around very suboptimal gameplay while not even being close to knowing the proper ways to open the game. I would really like to encourage everybody to throw their most abusive proxies and their oldest, cheesiest rushes into the mix and even try to refine them as much as possible. How many raxes does a 2rax proxy feature these days? Is canonrushing really dead against ravagers eventually cleaning them up or may it just lead to a weird 1base vs 1base scenario? Is 12pool any good? How fast can you baneling bust? How does an opponent stop proxy hatches if all his prodcution and tech is delayed? There are many unanswered questions and we can theorycraft all the way about them (as I did above with Tang's 1base baneling bust). But the only way to create a metagame and to figure out if you are losing to the new units or rather just an opponent getting away with too much early on is to try and punish them early.
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before you can have an optimal opener, you must first understand the new economy and maps, thats all people have been doing, really - trying to match up their old builds to the new opening
and theres plenty of cheez in zvz, it will spread to the other matchups soon enough, with more players and eventually unlocking the ranked ladder
its not really worth designing openings around new units whose properties may change wildly before release!
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Give more beta keys to Chinese/Taiwanese players huehue
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On April 09 2015 21:30 darkscream wrote: its not really worth designing openings around new units whose properties may change wildly before release!
meanwhile not exploring all the possible openings/strats feeds false data to game dev.
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On April 09 2015 21:34 fLyiNgDroNe wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2015 21:30 darkscream wrote: its not really worth designing openings around new units whose properties may change wildly before release! meanwhile not exploring all the possible openings/strats feeds false data to game dev. Data is data, it might not be the exact data they want, but nothing is false about it.
I don't understand how people have complaints about balance and viability of units and builds WITHIN ONE FUCKING WEEK OF BETA. People are still joking around, Naniwa and Morrow played an Archon Mode ZvZ yesterday going Ling into Roach into Muta into Ravager into Infestor into fucknogasleft Lings into Swarmhost. That makes no sense. People are just toying around.
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I think the key part of your text is that we try to balance things around suboptimal play. I see people say this and that is OP when we know so little about the game. But I agree, more all ins and cheeses is imperative for the game to stabilize imo.
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I saw DeMusliM do proxy 3 Raxes against Zerg yesterday multiple times, and it seemed... more than viable. I guess it's the new 2 Rax.
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I've already thought about my plans when I will be able to test the game, my first priority is to find if cheeses are really dead as a lot of people wants to believe.
My first try will be the equivalent of a 4 gate that will hit way faster with at least 5 gates, I don't think it will be absolutely terrible as a cheese
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On April 09 2015 21:34 fLyiNgDroNe wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2015 21:30 darkscream wrote: its not really worth designing openings around new units whose properties may change wildly before release! meanwhile not exploring all the possible openings/strats feeds false data to game dev.
prove every iteration possible is not being experimented with
oh wait it probably is, blizzard has live data and all replays whereas you have... whatever streamer youre watchin
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zergs are just rushing for ravagers on 1 base....it's like a 4 ravager rush in zvp and then there's the 3 ravager rush with speedlings in zvz
i saw some zerg do the 3 ravager with speedlings in zvt as well
all of this comes out around 2:40 in game
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Italy12246 Posts
Yeah im not sure about other matchups but there sure is cheese in ZvP, in fact they seem to do it way more often because it's so hard to tell the difference between bane busts and one base ravager, and they require pretty different responses.
Currently allining a zerg in PvZ feels incredibly hard though, by the time our tech (even just warpgate) is done the zerg has better saturation so it's really pointless to try anything.
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Give it time. Most of the people streaming are not actually top caliber players.. they're celebrities like Apollo, Nathanias, etc. The viewers want to see the new units and they're catering to that.
If you watch Parting stream he's doing all kinds of cheese...
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I think when more people get beta we'll see a lot more people attempting to exploit the early economy.
I fully agree with the OP and dislike hearing "why am I getting 12 pooled in beta??". Builds need to be viable (or adaptable).
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This beta is as much about the new units as it is about the new economy.
I have a theory that once it's figured out Zerg will be really really really strong, because the new economy "delays" tech, relatively speaking.
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On April 09 2015 21:45 SC2Toastie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2015 21:34 fLyiNgDroNe wrote:On April 09 2015 21:30 darkscream wrote: its not really worth designing openings around new units whose properties may change wildly before release! meanwhile not exploring all the possible openings/strats feeds false data to game dev. Data is data, it might not be the exact data they want, but nothing is false about it. I don't understand how people have complaints about balance and viability of units and builds WITHIN ONE FUCKING WEEK OF BETA. People are still joking around, Naniwa and Morrow played an Archon Mode ZvZ yesterday going Ling into Roach into Muta into Ravager into Infestor into fucknogasleft Lings into Swarmhost. That makes no sense. People are just toying around.
I hope you "don't understand how blizzard can patch the beta after just X weeks" as well then.
The whole process of a beta is for feedback and changes. It is not about "let everything develop". I didn't want to put this into OP, because it comes off a little aggressive, but on the mentioned episode of the lategame there was at least one guy mentioning how people who rush in beta are scumbacks (not an exact quote). Maybe semisarcastically, but still. It also matches with my own experiences from the LotV Custom Mod. E.g. I played TvZ with a zerg who kept on opening greedily, even 3 hatch before pool gainst me and I felt like I was just always at a disadvantage right from the start. In game 3 I proxied 3barracks. He lost and his reaction was "why would you be an asshole in this mod" and refused to play me again. I did the same to a different zerg player on another day, and he too didn't want to play me again because of that.
Yeah, sandboxing with the new features is nice and gives you some information, but I'd hate it if f.e they nerfed the cyclone into the ground just because zergs want to play around with ravagers and lurkers rather then baneling bust the shit out of a Terran that doesn't go hellions early.
That is not to be said that cheesing and rushing doesn't exist. Ravager rushes are running rampant. And it's only been a week of beta or so. But I think in all the discussions about units it is not wrong to have a friendly reminder thread that the metagame isn't the metagame just because units do stuff, but also because build orders are heavily timing based.
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Italy12246 Posts
On April 09 2015 23:09 DinoMight wrote: This beta is as much about the new units as it is about the new economy.
I have a theory that once it's figured out Zerg will be really really really strong, because the new economy "delays" tech, relatively speaking.
Even before figuring anything out, that is certainly the case. It's also a massive reason why Protoss is so bad right now. A lot of timings need to be adjusted if Zerg units will remain as massable, as easily, or if Protoss (and/or mech) units require so much time and tech to get a solid army.
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On April 09 2015 23:17 Teoita wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2015 23:09 DinoMight wrote: This beta is as much about the new units as it is about the new economy.
I have a theory that once it's figured out Zerg will be really really really strong, because the new economy "delays" tech, relatively speaking. Even without figuring anything out, that is certainly the case. It's also a massive reason why Protoss is so bad right now. A lot of timings need to be adjusted if Zerg units will remain as massable, as easily, or if Protoss (and/or mech) units require so much time and tech to get a solid army.
Yeah as if the warpgate nerf, sentry nerf (ravager), oracle/dt nerf (turrets), immortal nerf, colossus nerf, tempest nerf weren't enough...
...we now move to an econ system where Zerg can fully saturate 3 bases before Protoss can have real (non-gateway) units on the map.
Sweet.
If I were in this beta I'd 1 base cheese every game until people figured out how to stop it. In HotS beta I was doing a 4 gate with Oracle cloak (hahaha, remember that?) and it was hilarious.
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Italy12246 Posts
But that's the problem - because tech and even just warpgate kick in much later, whatever cheese you do is going to be awful unless it relies on massing cheap, easily accessible units early on. Simply needing warpgate to attack makes protoss completely incapable of allining (or generally being aggressive on one or two bases) in any way, because our opponent's build is so much more developed by the time we can attack with anything at all. 7gating into a Zerg with 60 drones instead of 40 is a massive difference; the same goes for terran stim timings for example. This is also why in our first impressions article, Iaguz mentioned that he feels like hellion/banshee can't pressure the zerg now - by the time you actually get to the other side of the map with 6 hellions and a banshee for example, his third is already fully set up, and creep spread has already begun.
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I'm too busy frantically trying to macro and not feel like I'm broke the whole game to worry about perfecting all-ins. That, and 1 base play so far has seemed incredibly awful.
Though, really, people will always find ways to all-in. It's been a little over a week and people are only just now starting to figure out consistent builds with the new economy, so I expect that we'll see some nasty all-ins pretty soon. There's already a couple Ravager/Cyclone rushes that make me pee myself.
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On April 09 2015 23:27 Teoita wrote: But that's the problem - because tech and even just warpgate kick in much later, whatever cheese you do is going to be awful unless it relies on massing cheap, easily accessible units early on. Simply needing warpgate to attack makes protoss completely incapable of allining (or generally being aggressive on one or two bases) in any way, because our opponent's build is so much more developed. 7gating into a Zerg with 60 drones instead of 40 is a massive difference; the same goes for terran stim timings for example. This is also why in our first impressions article, Iaguz mentioned that he feels like hellion/banshee can't pressure the zerg now - by the time you actually get to the other side of the map with 6 hellions and a banshee for example, his third is already fully set up, and creep spread has already begun.
Proxy Void Rays vs every race haha
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