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//: StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm |OT| Like Riding a Bike

Polymath

Neo Member
So it's been nearly 2 years since i played HotS. Started off as a Zerg and later transitioned to Terran (Only got to high gold unfortunately), but damn it took me way too long to realize how much i miss this game! Maybe it's just me, but sc2 is the only non team oriented eSport game out there right now.

Anyhow i went straight into promos to find myself facing masters/dia after the first 2 wins.
Got placed into gold, but was getting constant mid plats as my opponents. So i made the decision to leave league and the promo's for a fresh start......

c432c9db23.jpg


Maybe not the best idea ever, but non the less i'm enjoying a game again where i am in control! No toxic team members, no afk'ers and nobody to blame for my loss except for myself.

So to wrap up this rather random story/post, is there any good resources for builds/improvement guides for Terran players? Been re-watching apollo's videos on how to play Terran but maybe there are more recent/up to date guides?.
 

Syf

Banned
Agreed with what you said man, and that's why SC2 is the only game I play competitively. I much prefer being responsible for everything whether it's a win or a loss. No asshole teammates to bother with or anything. Glad you rediscovered the game. I'll try to track down some newer Terran guides.

Also the IEM Katowice (world championship) AM qualifiers are going on all night. Some pretty good names - http://www.twitch.tv/basetradetv

Bracket - http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/IEM_Season_IX_-_World_Championship/American_Qualifier
 
Uh... why isn't this region-locked? American qualifiers round of 32 has like 4 players actually from the Americas. :| Pretty silly to have different qualifiers and a different number of spots per region if anyone can participate...
 

SamuraiX-

Member
Good FUCK and I thought the AM bracket was stacked:

a9KBBSl.png


INnoVation and DRG are also playing and were somehow not included in this list. lol

Gogo Bomber, Dream and Soulkey!! :3

Edit: Nvm Soulkey already was knocked out by TY. ;_;

We desperately need more elite Zergs at Katowice. Hopefully Dark can make it. He always destroys IEM qualifier brackets.
 

SamuraiX-

Member
PATIENCE QUALIFIED!? fml

Thank god Dark not only qualified but denied sOs a chance of stealing more money. Actually, would've loved to see sOs make it over Patience.
 

Syf

Banned
Good for him, his team flew him out there just to play these qualifiers with low latency, looks like it paid off.

Snute still has one more chance to make it.
 

SamuraiX-

Member
It's always been hard to give a fuck about Korean vs foreigner representation at SC2 tournaments when you just want to see the highest quality games possible.

I mean, guys like Snute, Bunny and MaNa have always been able to hold their own pretty well against Koreans but in the end it never matters because they hardly ever place Top 4 in a premiere tournament that has Koreans participating. I've pretty much let the #foreignerhope ship sink ever since Stephano retired.

With that said, SICK list of players at this year's IEM Katowice:

DtmzwgK.png


Can't wait to see the bracket. Hope Patience gets matched up against a powerhouse and get's 3-0'd into retirement.
 
Yeah, pretty weird to see Patience in there. He did go through Cure, Gumiho, soO, and Dark to qualify though, I suppose you can't say it's undeserved. Still, it would be very surprising to see him make it past the first round.

I hope that TaeJa, Solar, and especially Flash get back in shape before Katowice. They've fallen pretty far from where they were when they made their IEM finals.
 
Yeah, pretty weird to see Patience in there. He did go through Cure, Gumiho, soO, and Dark to qualify though, I suppose you can't say it's undeserved. Still, it would be very surprising to see him make it past the first round.

I hope that TaeJa, Solar, and especially Flash get back in shape before Katowice. They've fallen pretty far from where they were when they made their IEM finals.

I would almost throw Zest in that group too. Lost in round of 16 in global finals (granted it was against Life) and didn't qualify for Code S.
 
That wall of Spines at the 4th won Rogue that game.

Damn that completely blindsided Dream. Been so long since I've seen someone use a Nydus Worm.

Really bad that Dream never scouted Solar's tech.
 

Syf

Banned
Test map update: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/16411181909#1

With some of the renewed discussion on Swarm Hosts over the weekend, we wanted to provide an update on where we’re at with the balance test map. While we haven’t seen the level of feedback we were hoping for with a change of this scale, there have been some high profile showmatches which have provided us with some useful information. In the games we’ve seen, we’re noticing a few important things:

The new Swarm Hosts are extremely effective at harassment in smaller numbers. Due to their high mobility and the flying locusts, it seems like there could be a lot of potential in this area.
The new Swarm Hosts are clearly weaker when in mass which was our intention. However, we’d like to push this even further to discourage mass Swarm Hosts.
If we do push Swarm Host even more towards a pure harassing role, we’ll have holes we need to fill. These are: Terran mech and Zerg being able to zone out High Templars in late game engagements.

So the changes we’re considering for the balance test map are:

Locust duration decreased from 30 to 25
This will allow countering mass Swarm Host armies during the long downtime between Locust spawns even better, while not hurting the smaller scale mobility based harassment cases as much.

Viper Blinding Cloud range increased from 10 to 11
This is to help vs. Mech especially since the range difference between Vipers and Vikings will be slightly greater.

Tempest no longer has +massive damage vs. air
Brood Lords can still be countered by the long range of Tempests, but they won’t be the hard counter they are now, meaning Brood Lords can serve to fill the missing gap created by the redesign of the Swarm Host.

Targeted release and continued testing
While these changes aren’t final, our current target time frame to release a live patch with the updated Swarm Host is shortly after the WCS Season 1 finals. This date will be coming up fast, so please continue playtesting on the balance test map and providing us with feedback. The next few weeks will be crucial in helping shape our next balance update. It will be difficult to patch such a major change without help from our community and the pro players.
 
Only thing I don't like with these changes is they're going to encourage mass Roach in almost every match up now. Tempest nerf might be a little too much but now Zerg doesn't really have anything to zone out High Templar.
 
Dammit Dream. That will teach me to change my picks, I guess. Happy for Rogue though. :)

Also, the guy I thought was going out in first was eliminated first, and the guy I thought had no chance came out first so... I guess I don't know shit!
 
Hey um... aren't there going to be scheduling conflicts between the Korean leagues and IEM finals? For instance Life is most probably going to have an SSL match on March 12, and possibly a GSL match on March 13, but he's also supposed to be in Poland between March 12-15... What happens then? Maru, herO, and Innovation could also have conflicts depending on who wins certain matches. It would really suck if some of the best players had to drop out of Katowice.
 

Syf

Banned
Hey um... aren't there going to be scheduling conflicts between the Korean leagues and IEM finals? For instance Life is most probably going to have an SSL match on March 12, and possibly a GSL match on March 13, but he's also supposed to be in Poland between March 12-15... What happens then? Maru, herO, and Innovation could also have conflicts depending on who wins certain matches. It would really suck if some of the best players had to drop out of Katowice.
That would be awful.. really hope they work something else out. Katowice is pretty much the biggest non-WCS event of the year.
 

survivor

Banned
Hey um... aren't there going to be scheduling conflicts between the Korean leagues and IEM finals? For instance Life is most probably going to have an SSL match on March 12, and possibly a GSL match on March 13, but he's also supposed to be in Poland between March 12-15... What happens then? Maru, herO, and Innovation could also have conflicts depending on who wins certain matches. It would really suck if some of the best players had to drop out of Katowice.

I think it was on TL that I read GSL is willing to delay matches for IEM. Not sure about SSL.
 

Lethe82

Banned
If Blizzard wants LotV to really keep its community they also need to just remake the BW interface right down to the custom games update lobby and devoting most of the UI to showing the chat channel.

EDIT: Well after a playing pretty casually here and there for the last month since work has quieted down I am back at rank 1 diamond. Hello glass ceiling my old friend.
 
Expecting Life to destroy Dear. Dear 4-0'd his round of 16 group in SSL but the 2 players he beat were Gumiho and Myungsik. He also didn't make it out of round of 32 of GSL and the only player he beat was Seed, so he hasn't beaten anyone decent in a long time.

So how is Zerg gonna be able to deal with mass Blink Stalkers with the Swarm Hosts change?
 
Hmm, that whole SSL round of 8 was really one-sided in every match. :\

So Maru has three Protosses in his GSL group tomorrow, and he's going against Stats next week in SSL. He probably practiced only Protoss for like 2 weeks straight, I think he's got this.
 

SamuraiX-

Member
I had Maru and herO coming out of this group. But PartinG is a complete widlcard as always.

Let's see if Maru has been able to keep up his form.
 
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