StarCraft 2

Yup, didn't stay up to watch, immediately spoil myself! Probably won't have time to check out the vods til friday or saturday now. Glad Innovation got through, surprised Parting did though.

Innovation is nerd balling on a completely different level than everyone else

Haha damnit.. I fell asleep and missed a lot of matches

TLO's PvZ is fucking weird, but in a very good way.

"FUCK SO IMBA"

Nani is such a joke whiner.

TBH it's not really common to get beaten by zerg on the same amount of bases like youI'm pretty sure swarm host contain in PvZ can be broken by ~4 colossi and good FF micro so you get all the locusts stuck in the force fields, kill them fast, make another FF trap and move forward, but good luck executing it on the fly. If you want to get extra fancy I'm pretty sure you could get WP and FF right on top of the hosts, but you better be Hero for that.

I'm not sure how PvZ works but I know if a Zerg goes Swarm Hosts in TvZ you just keep a decent force to hold back the Locust swarm while while constantly hitting everywhere else. Their immobility makes it so their bases are generally undefended. However if you constantly try to push against the Swarm Hosts you're generally going to have a bad time.

TLO's version is basically rush with nydus and he builds a whole base in front of your natural, before most FFE builds really hit their stride, even if you rush colossi you still need range and decent number of them, because they trade very well against every other ground unit. It also demolishes any kind of HT/Stargate play and early thirds. He also abuses the fact that spores, spines and queens synergize extremely well and only require minerals. Give it a week or 2 and people will figure it out, but for now it's very potent, especially in TLO's hands, since he is so comfortable playing in weird positions.

Is this kind of an issue where the FFE player just turtles too hard inside their own base while completely abandoning unit production? It sounds like if you require a Nydus up front and everything you should be able to scout what is going on (Nydus + Pit -- or just Nydus) and just make a Void Ray. It sounds similar to in TvT where if you are way too defensive of your natural you're going to go locked inside your base by rallied tanks and you'll be in the most annoying, hardest, contain of your life.

Like I said PvZ isn't my specialty but I know Protoss in TvP are getting extremely greedy behind a MSC knowing that their base cannot be attacked and I don't know if that is true in PvZ as well. It almost sounds like TLO is just exploiting the meta that Toss has nothing to stop him setting up camp. Is it standard to go Robo or Star after FFE in PvZ? Because it sounds like going Star really would shut this down by making a void ray to make sure that Worm never pop out.

-edit-

Yeah reading the thread on Reddit it seems like the keys to stopping the build are (a) early awareness (b) avoiding the Hosts

You can't really stop it, since TLO has no problem dropping 2 worms if necessary and if he has 4 queens + hosts popping out of it right away with couple of drones making spores, you can't really touch it. It's certainly exploiting the meta a bit, since no toss wants to play against mutas, but running with your army around your map is sure way to lose against any other build. FFE also doesn't really have an army until like 7:00, when WG finishes and then you have no tech if you want 6-8 gates by that time. Like I'm pretty sure people TLO practised it against are figuring it out. Stuff like WP drop with sentries to FF the ramp should do rather well.

Well apparently the build is picking up steam in Korea so I'm sure we'll see the answer shortly

Balance test changes out:

Burrow 50/50 @ Tier1
Spores do 15+30bio
Oracles are faster

They're still not addressing the fact that Oracles are the world's gayest unit nor mech not being extremely viable in TvZ/TvP. Also yay more early Roach timings from Zerg. God forbid I go a few games on ladder without getting all-in'd. Its like Blizzard doesn't quite understand that for Zerg early aggression is far more costly than any other race and they're just trying all these retarded ideas to make it work.

The speed change has no real effect on the allins or proxy Stargate strategies, it's mostly there to let you actually use Revelation in the mid-late game without losing the Oracle.

No, the acceleration change definitely helps when you run into a mine to turn around. Terrans get their panties in a twist over that change but it doesn't really change the fact that if they are stopped or god forbid killed, you are screwed. PvT still has the problem with t3 splash tech being essential at 10 minutes, so investing 300+ gas into harass needs to be really worth it. Burrow is going to be the gayest tech ever, since you will need detection to take any expo beyond your natural. ZvZ would be fine if they actually made muta micro a thing instead of them piloting like vehicles in WoW. The spore change still doesn't address the fact that mutas give you map control. Extremely sceptical of that change. Speaking of boring units, corruptors anyone ?

"Oracles will be near impossible to counter with ground units if the Protoss player micros perfectly.

.This actually sounds pretty cool and helps differentiate the Oracle from other harass units in the game."

Oh blizzard.

Burrow and oracle changes are both terrible. We don't need changes based on "sounds pretty cool". I've heard the "it doesn't really effect anything, but lets you use revelation" schtick before and I A) don't buy it and B) you should not be able to cast revelation throughout the entire game pretty much guaranteed to get away with the oracle. Do people not realize how stupidly op a spell revelation is? Why should you be able to track the majority of someone's army for only the cost of energy?

mures_sl said:

"Oracles will be near impossible to counter with ground units if the Protoss player micros perfectly.

.This actually sounds pretty cool and helps differentiate the Oracle from other harass units in the game."

Oh blizzard.

Burrow and oracle changes are both terrible. We don't need changes based on "sounds pretty cool". I've heard the "it doesn't really effect anything, but lets you use revelation" schtick before and I A) don't buy it and B) you should not be able to cast revelation throughout the entire game pretty much guaranteed to get away with the oracle. Do people not realize how stupidly op a spell revelation is? Why should you be able to track the majority of someone's army for only the cost of energy?

Click to expand...

Vikings can still shoot them down even with the speed change, the issue is it has to stop to cast the spell, which means decelerating, casting, and then accelerating again to get away. It can't escape from even stimmed marines after casting it right now unless you just aim for the tail edge of the blob.

mures_sl said:

Do people not realize how stupidly op a spell revelation is? Why should you be able to track the majority of someone's army for only the cost of energy?

Click to expand...

Because Terrans don't have a spell located on their main building that let's you see huge parts of the map ?

Not gonna lie, scan is "op" too, but its nothing like tracking units for an extended period of time.

Can this conversation please be moved to the TL official imbalance discussion thread

So spores rape Mutas now? Is that the only bio air unit?