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A bit about me!
If you don't know who I am, I'm a casual SC player from SC1. That's pretty much it! Also, I 2v2 a lot in SC 2 Beta!

Livestream will be down, until I can switch my internet from wireless to wire.


7/10/2010
Beta has been back up for the last two days for phase 2 for the last 2 weeks!
However there are even more problems with Bnet 2.0 than before. If you don't check TL much I'll update on the progress too.

5/1/2010
Going to Japan for a month , be back around June 5, Hopefully Beta is done by then!!!

4/13/2010
Today I just did some quick testing on the terran orbital command. This is what I got, which matched other sites yet also brings new light to some things.
Mule drop=270 minerals over 90 seconds 30 minerals per mine(270+)
Scan=270minerals lost due to mule drop (270-)
Supply drop=270-120=150 minerals lost (150-)
100 minerals saved from building the depot, 20 minerals saved from mining time lost(close proximity of mineral line, 5 minerals more per distance more. 10 more mineral saved usually if built at choke"

Now here comes the juice,
Scan = free scout AOE for a set duration, cost basically 270 minerals, as it is a mule.
Tested, building a racks and calling down a mule. 270minerals(mule)-150min(racks)-40min(mining time)=80minerals
Here you can drop a mule, and build a racks, float it, and usually it will make it to your opponents base by the time you need a scan to see what tech they go to. Usually your scouting worker can see if any proxy or 6 pool is going on, any other later timing attack against terran i usually ineffective.

So if you're thinking of using scan just for the sake of seeing tech. don't scan, build a barracks ahead of time, and float it there, it's 1k life, unless they see it a mile away, it's a good scout. Opposed to losing 270 minerals, you gain 80 minerals with a difference of 350 minerals. That's almost a command center.

Terran scout options: floating racks> scan for PRE-TIER 2
Unless you need to scan for cloaked/buried units, don't bother saving it, and drop those mules. Mind you if your scouting scv is still alive, you can use that to proxy racks for a forward racks scout.

Edit: Mules don't stack on top of each other on mineral patches. However, they do stack over scvs. No mining time is ever lost for the mules themselves due to over saturation. SCVs, do in turn avoid the patch if there is a mule/scvs mining though.This may affect the amount of money gained(plateau in income). Too hard to calculate though, cuz it'll involve monte carlo simulations without actual formulas.

4/12/2010
Haven't been blogging much, but that's mainly because nothing much has been happening. Now that the lastest patch has come through, I think it's a good thing, for 1v1 anyway.

First thing first, zerg nerfs! Roach nerf was quite called for and I actually agree, as in 1v1 they were quite overpowered for a tier 1.5 unit. That's 4 dmg from lings, 14 dmg from zealots, and 5 dmg from marines. Huge difference in early game play. I believe no more nerfs are required for the roach. It's good for a slow DPS tank, range 3.

Hydras, still awesome in zvz, but a 10 hp nerf makes a whole world of difference. Thors melt them in one shot each now, and collosi take 1 less shot to kill them. Storms drops their HP to about 1-2HP. In short, they are much more micro heavy now that they can't last very long. In my opinion, this was uncalled for.

Now about the biggest change, Concussion Missiles. This is indeed a fair balance. I've been playing zerg for a month, and then terran for a month, and now moving on to protoss. What's for sure is that marauders early game dominated with those slows. Zealots, Zerglings, roaches, and stalkers didn't stand a chance when they were stimmed. Now that it requires an upgrade, it'll make tier 1's of other races more viable. Let's be reasonable 80 seconds is nothing, especially when you know you want pure marauders going 3 racks and at least two tech labs. Obviously getting stim first, and when gas permits, the slow. 100/100 Is only going to slow you down so much. A nerf? Yes. Called for? Hell Yes. Marauders are insanely powerful, and they still are. Very cost effective too, as you can throw in a few ghost or medivacs with the extra gas still.

Void ray nerf/buff? Nothing to much to say here, they do more base damage, less DPS in the long run. They still do quite a bit of damage. I don't see this changing that significantly much.

Anyway I'll be playing more toss now, and then by the end of beta I hope I know, which race I'll pick.

4/1/2010
I've been playing random for like a few weeks now, so my Zerg 1v1 has gone down alot.
However, I played this epic game of ZvZ yesterday and would like to share
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=I3E25LRJ
I may be bad, and played at a gold level, but this game was leet.

3/30/2010
If you guys haven't already, check out Jon's blog for epic videos for trick in SC2 to make micro management better and other things!

I've been playing lots of protoss and terran recently to get a feel of things. Things I've noticed, which are underused as a protoss is the high templar's feedback. Obviously Storm is > than all spells, but realistically it has to be researched and cost 75 erg. Not bad right? Well when you have a lot of templars(2-3), feedback is AMAZINGGGGG against terran. It affects, ghost, medivacs, banshee, thor,raven, and the BC. That's half of terran's arsenal. I'm not the best protoss player or even considered decent at all. I can say my skill is about a low rank gold player. However, I'll post up some replays seeing how effective it is if I can find them. Feedbacking banshee's before they cloak and doing 200 dmg off the bat to a thor feels amazing.

Another underused ability is halluncination for 150/150 I believe? You can choose to opt out robotics bay and go templar tech if you go this route, because you can make pheonix copies to scout for you as you will have a quite a few sentries.Also you can throw in a couple of fake zealots as it makes TWO of lower tier units to absorb more dmg than a Guardian shield would. This would make your zealot composition MUCH BIGGER and have energy to throw in storms. I believe hallu was not viable as much in SC1 due to storm being > . I do not know how this will mix with GS and Forcefield and energy management. Hope to see more things come out of hallu.



3/24/2010
In SC1 the miss rate for shooting up elevation(ramps) were about 33%. After testing with lots of marines. The miss rates are 0% in SC2. So is there a difference between a ramp and a small choke? Aside from the "sight" advantage, there isn't as much as a huge factor fighting up and down a ramp.

3/18/2010
So I've done some testing today with specific units. Ghost/HT, infestors and Raven.

Some interesting things I found was the ghost EMP had a shorter range than the feedback range of the HTs. Meaning by the time the ghost gets to shoot his EMP, it will get feedbacked. Also an easy way to spot the ghost out to feedback for HTs, is using ALT to see the units on the enemy side. Purple energy bar indicates the ghost out of the ball.
This obviously leaves some implications about PVT, hopefully we'll see the balance of HTs vs. ghost when the beta ladder resets.

Infestors using neural parasite has been changed! No longer affects air units, but the way it works is also slightly different. IT is STILL channeling meaning you will see the little latching tentacle onto the unit being controlled. No longer is it 10 seconds, but the most notable part is the infestor NOT being able ot move while using this ability. In addition, control is lost when the controlled unit moves out a certain "range". I didn't bother calculating the range, but it's fairl large from the infestor. A tentacle can only go so far lol. Balance issue arises when they nerfed the infestor HP by almost 25% leaving it with less than 100 HP and being an armored unit. Won't last long against anything, especially standing still.

The raven test I did was mainly the point defense drones to counter protoss threats, as it basically stop all range from zerg, I was wondering if it did for toss. Unfortunately it does NOT stop interceptors, collosus's thermal lances, void ray, and mother ship. This is huge making the raven much more useless in PvT as the point defense drone does wonders tvt and tvz. In addition 100 dmg from hunter seeker missile plays less of a role as the point defense drone takes up several volleys of dmg. However I am no terran expert, so I'll leave the uses of Raven as ?????????.

3/17/2010
I've been bedridden 2 weeks ago, and after my desktop decided to explode. I currently just received my new motherboard and soon my new processor and ram. Hopefully my live stream will be back up again and more strats.

3/4/2010
Today I played loads of 1v1 and got myself to gold rank 5 =D yeah me! By the way I'm a zerg player, I know nothing else >.<
Anyway, throughout this intrepid day, I tried lots of new strats.
I'll list briefly of some strats most ppl use(mainly unit combinations).
Note: I've NEVER lost a game so far using this strat for the last 10 matches, I went from rank 30->in just about 2.5-3hrs. Favoured or unfavoured, didn't matter.

ZvZ
Skips the zerglings-> straight MASS ROACHES
branches to ->hydras
->nydus worm
ZvP
Skips the zerglings-> straight MASS ROACHES
branches to ->hydras
->nydus worm

ZvT
Skips the zerglings-> straight MASS ROACHES
branches to ->hydras
->nydus worm
-> Mutas

My new ones I tried
ZvZ
Skips the zerglings-> straight MASS ROACHES-> Mutas
branches to ->MASS muta
-> Ultra/roach
Why Mutas? Yes, I know you will get shredded by hydras.
They are your "offensive scouts" use them to take down overlords and keep scouting them for external bases, what units they have. I have seen many players go hydras, cuz they thinking it's better, and when you have about the same size army, they'll try to nydus worm into your base.
Hydras= Roaches on the ground and are more expensive. You only need about 3-5 mutas in the air. Spend the rest on roaches, roach speed, and burrow. Get your OL speed up and scout. Make sure you have equal bases.

Most zergs are aggressive. I haven't seen on myself that isn't. Even I'm offensive. If he puts a nydus in your base, burrow your drones, and let HIIM IN, use the mutas to take down the wurm while your main forces engage. It takes time for units to come out of the nydus, and you should be winning, one the nydus is down, he can't retreat. Demolish their army, and go straight for their base, you should have the obvious advantage of half your army left. Keep using the mutas to take down those OLs!!

If they don't worm you, expand, how macro him, and make sure you have a superior army(how? your mutas should keep him check, he doesn't know what u have, u know what he has). As this rate, you should be out macro and pump out decent counters, mass mutas if they have hydras, ultras+ mass roaches if they have mainly roaches and a few hydras combination.



ZvP
Skips the zerglings-> a few roaches -> mass lings-> hydras

This is where it gets really funny. Most zergs go roaches against toss, so once they see you have 3-4 roaches they'll be like "YEAH YEAH go stalkers, a few zealots from my initial harass and Immortals and I WIN XD". WRONG! Go speed lings and get a LOT OF them, with a few roaches here and there. Usually i got two base here with x2 queens popping them out. Get a 2 overseers , one for your roach/ling army, and another for group 2 of MASS LINGS. He'll come out for the attack once he sees your group 1(group 2 should be far away) With speed upgrade, lings move fast. Time it when he attacks your group 1, surround them with lings. Only things you'll have left is roaches and a few lings, at the same time keep pumping those lings and go for a retaliation. Game should be yours, it was mine several times!

ZvT
A few zerglings-> mass lings/banelings-> infestors/hydras

Make sure to have overlords all over the map in key locations to spot banshees, quickly go to two base, and go mainly lings to protect yourself from any initial marine push. Once your opponent doesn't see any roaches or scout any roach den from the scans, they'll usually go hellion/marine/medivac/tank. Usually the hellions and marines come first, and at this point, you should have a decent amount of banelings/zerglings/hydras/burrow. BURROW is key, it keeps your units hidden, so you bait your opponent in. The hydras MUST concentrate on attacking the hellions and and banelings/zerglings against the rines? If they went marauders, they are as good as dead to just lings/banelings.

Terrans are resilient, they throw out different things at you from tanks, to thors, banshees, and vikings. Hydras are dead hard counters to both banshees and vikings. Lings and banelings just melt bio, thors and tanks. I find throwing a few infestors for infested marines/fungal growth REALLY effective, especially when the banelings are lagging behind.

If you think you can take them down at their base after they lost their army, go ahead, but only if you are sure! Planetary fortress can ruin your day. I usually expand to 3-4 bases, and then go for ultras if they heavy on mech, or brood lords if they are heavy bio.


Thanks for reading again!

3/1/2010
Spell Casters/Notable Abilites
Ghost
Cloak(must be researched) :After the lack of detection in sc2 for terran and zerg, cloaking ghost are deadly that can pump down your workers really fast and early without one knowing. Terrans using their energy early for mules instead of saving for scans, and zerg with only overseers(lair tech).
Snipe: 25 energy for 45 dmg. Takes down protoss and zerg workers in one shot, not even a warning since they die in one shot.!
EMP: This is where the ghost shines. 100 energy to take down 100 shields/ all energy and revealed cloaking for 5 seconds. This is truly anti-protoss skill. Imperative in tvp.


Thor
250 mm canons: 500 to target units or building for 100 energy. This is what makes thors so good for sieging. Take down canons, planetary fortresses, and any essential buidling with ease. Can't even out repair when one player uses two of these.

Banshee
Cloak(must be researched) : Very essential at the moment when I see banshee rushes. After 3-4 banshee, they'll get cloak up,t would drive one nuts. It is even more annoying than wraiths in sc1.

Raven
Auto-turret: Drops down a stationary turret lasting 3 mins, and can shoot as fast as marine and decent health. 50 energy too. Not bad

Point defense drone: Honestly, I have never seen this being used or how it works, so I hold off any opinion on this.

Hunter Seeker Missile: Never saw this in an actual battle either, but judging from testing against AI, nice AOE dmg. Can be avoided apparently.

Battlecruiser
Yamato Gun: Shoots much faster than before! That's a huge difference in my opinion.

Queen
Creep Tumor: 25 energy, Really good skill to spread creep all over the map, as you drop one and then that can multiply once.

Spawn Larvae: 25 energy, best queen ability! spawns 4 larvae in 40 seconds all at once. Increase the efficiency of the hatchery by x2 and a bit more.If one keeps popping this skill at 25 energy, it's especially another hatchery/better.

Transfusion: 50 energy, heals 125, underused, but soooo useful against harassment of reapers, banshees, mutas, and void rays.Two queens keeping eachother alive during an early air rush works really well.

Infestors
Spawn Infested Terrans: 25 energy, about 50 HP and 5 dmg, last 20 seconds, very good at absorbing damage. Haven't seen it used much since patch.

Neural Parasite: 75 Energy, now channeling and can target any unit now. Huge improvement from patch. I actually use this against collosus now, cuz it's so useful!

Fungal Growth: It's been buffed to 20-> 36 damage. huge improvement again to the infestor. Puts terran bio in terrible conditions(close to red life) and immobilizes them so mid game roachs with infestors can push armies back and prevent them from retreating.

Corruptor
Corruption: 75 energy, stop s a building from working for 30 seconds. Nice against static defense.

Sentry
Force Field: 50 energy, to place a 15 s force field. Amazing ability that disrupts crescent moon formations and makes units go crazy. Also good for defensive abilities to block chokes or to block retreats.

Guardians Shield: Reduce ranged damage by 2 for 15 seconds inside the field. Very effective against roaches, hydras, marauders, and marines early game. Overall very essential in pvt, and pvz.

Hallucination(must be researched): 100 energy to hallucinate any unit on the list (no carriers/mothership/dt). Haven't seen this being utilized, but has a lot of potential.


Stalker
Blink(must be researched): It's on the left side of the tech tree, so honestly, I haven't see this research even once. The ability is too far up the tech tree and people would rather go for robotic tech or charge.

High Templar
Psi Storm(must be researched): 80 dmg AOE, I've seen this used frequently and effective. remains just as effective since SC1.

Feedback: This is the anti ghost/infestor ability. Deals damage equal to the amount of energy unit has. Imperative against terran.


Phoenix
Graviton Beam: Picks up any unit up from the ground to air, and makes both the Phoenix and itself vulnerable. Not very useful, as I barely seen it used at all unless it for giggles.

Mothership
Recall: It now has recall, it's the new arbiter, self explanatory as it brings all units from target location to itself

Temporal Rift: AOE remove units from a target location for a few seconds. Can be timed so a nuke can hit right when the effect brings them back in 2v2. I've seen this used MANY times as it is very effective at taking armies apart.

2/24/2010
Question 1: How do Zerg counter Marines + Marauders + Medivacs?

I find when most people push our with marines and marauders, you can usually tell at their base, as they have 3-4 barracks are their base. I find the most economical way is using a mixture of units depending on what they have more of.

Lots of marines? A bit of marauders and Medivacs:

Strats I've seen: Roaches and banelings Mostly Roaches to tank for banelings to take-em down.

Strats I use: Roaches, hydras and infestors. First of all I like to go lots and lots of lings at the beginning to fake out the terran to go marines and less marauders. Obviously most competent players will throw in a few marauders into the mix. After the initial ling harass, I would have my expansion, lair, roach den and burrow. I would have my units burrowed in front of the base, so that when they come, you unburrow on top of them with your roaches/ remaining lings. This should be more than enough with their initial force. Get hydras and infestors. 2 Infestors at this stage is good, and 6-7 hydras with a lot of roaches. This should be more than enough to counter marine+medivac+ marauder build.