StarCraft II Matchmaking Thread

[Pimp_Willy]

So I found out your hotkey changes stick to your BNet Account, not your computer, so thats awesome. Makes me less timid about changing some so that if I play somewhere else I’ll still have my values.

I plan to change (I)mmortal to R
Probably change ~ to something like F1 for my camera location for my ramp so it’s easier to get there quickly
Toying with changing Ad(V)anced building to Z or something, since its so close to B and when its dark I mess that up a lot

Also, I’m gonna use my name change. I can’t use PimpWilly because Pimp is censored. I’m considered Willy.SRK or some variation with an SRK clan tag, but my worry is that when Clan support is added in the near future, it’ll end up looking like [SRK]Willy.SRK or something. Still gotta think about that one, dunno if anybody has any good suggestions.

[Magnifico]

good idea, I’m gonna change my Immortal hotkey too.

I think RushDownTV is already a pretty awesome name actually

[Pimp_Willy]

Haha, well the reason I made that my tag is that I was starting up a website (RushDown.TV) but then I ran out of time so I wasn’t able to keep it up; still have hope to do something with that. It just seems weird to advertise a website that isn’t even active

[Natureboy_1]

Tell me your thoughts on these customizable hot keys. It came to my attention that I’m very fluent with hot keys for making any building/unit, and just about any activated ability. However, the buttons I always click on are the upgrades, so instead of worrying about what that shit is (like Metabolic Boost is M by default) I just change it to A, S, D, F, etc. going from left to right on the screen.

So Spawning pool has A and S for Meta boost and Adrenal glands. Roach warren has A and S for Roach speed, tunneling claws. Evo chamber has A, S, D, for melee attack, range attack, and ground armor…you get the idea.

Thoughts?

Obviously this could be taken for tech labs, engi bays, armories, forges, etc. as well.

I always hate having to hit m on the keyboard for metabolic boost or the melee upgrade, so I think I will try this out. Good idea

Another good possibility for the zerg players is changing the hatchery hotkey (default: backspace) to the tilde key (~). I changed this one right after I patched.

I may also change my hold position hotkey to D or something…just to get it on a regular key for my left hand.

[Irennicus]

It always makes me feel better when someone in the master’s league likes my idea.

ggs last night Sleeve, Trane, and PimpWilly.

[Magnifico]

whoa theres a preset hatchery hotkey? what does it do, cycle through your hatches or select all or what?

[Irennicus]

whoa theres a preset hatchery hotkey? what does it do, cycle through your hatches or select all or what?

Cycles through them.

[Magnifico]

Cool. Why in gods name would they make it default to backspace though? haha.

Your upgrade hotkey change idea is pretty neat, I usually just click upgrades since I don’t have to do them too often but maybe that’s partly because the default keys are too inconvenient to remember

[Irennicus]

There’s a lot of talk on team liquid about the ladder maps and how it’s really hurting SC2’s popularity in Korea as well as amongst a lot of the foreign pros. While I don’t think that the whole list is HORRIBLE I do think that the majority is clearly geared towards one type of play (honorable exceptions include metalopolis, skakuras, and lost temple when it’s not zvt) but most of it clearly is. What do you guys think of the current ladder map pool?

[Pimp_Willy]

The backspace thing works for all races, not just zerg, its just zerg benefits the most from it due to injects.

ggs last night, the end of night games were all cheese which I found amazingly funny. That Biohazard game was awesome haha.

As for the map pool, when I’m playing on them I don’t really care too much. Watching the pros play, sometimes I hate the imbalance. Like Remember GSL season 1, Lost Temple was like auto lose for zergs vs T when they would thor drop the cliff? But now its no big deal, because they deal with it. So I dunno.

I do hate watching TvZ on jungle basin, because its very predictable: Fast Expand, then expand to the gold with a Planetary fortress and deny Zerg a third -> Win. I just like the new map pool because it keeps things fresh, and I’ve been having a blast on the new GSL maps

[Natureboy_1]

I successfully forgot to use all my new hotkeys every match I played today…

/facepalm

[ThatGuy_MNSk8]

GG’s tonight pimp…Why don’t you stop sucking so much and learn how to play toss?

[N-StradAT9]

i think people blow the problem with maps out of proportion a bit, but the game could do with a bit of a mixup on that front to keep things fresh.

Should leave the pool: Jungle Basin, Steppes, Delta Quadrant
Should stay: Metalopolis, Shakuras, Scrap Station, Lost Temple. (i think close-by-ground positions on lost temple are about as close as players should spawn to one another in a 1v1)
Should add: Crossfire, after that i don’t know. The 3 GSL maps are ok i guess but they’re very slightly too big i think. Wouldn’t want to see every game be 100% macro.

All imo of course.

[Irennicus]

i think people blow the problem with maps out of proportion a bit, but the game could do with a bit of a mixup on that front to keep things fresh.

Should leave the pool: Jungle Basin, Steppes, Delta Quadrant
Should stay: Metalopolis, Shakuras, Scrap Station, Lost Temple. (i think close-by-ground positions on lost temple are about as close as players should spawn to one another in a 1v1)
Should add: Crossfire, after that i don’t know. The 3 GSL maps are ok i guess but they’re very slightly too big i think. Wouldn’t want to see every game be 100% macro.

All imo of course.

If they keep lost temple please for the love of god fix that cliff. ZvT on Lost Temple is ridiculous. Even if you fend off the tank/thor drop the T player is free to expand expand expand at virtually zero risk.

[Pimp_Willy]

Thats why I like the cliffs on Biohazard (I think thats the one?) a lot better, because thors can’t hit your natural and even though tanks can, it’s easier to get spine crawlers into position. It also only barely fits a tank, so theres no marine backup with turrets that go down. I don’t think Lost temple needs to come out, theres a lot of good games that tend to come from there in the GSL. I havent seen a successful tank drop on the cliff on that map in the GSL in a long time.

And even though the new maps are big, they’re designed with interesting features in them. The one with the natural in the base, it’s very prone to air harassment, and its hard to work and get a third (need to take out rocks). Biohazard, theres good proxy ability plus all the grass makes for intense mid field engagements. And then the other GSL one has a high ground leading into the opponents base, near their mineral line, makes blink stalker attacks good or even just using blink stalkers to scout, same with Reapers. All in all I think new maps do breath some fresh life into the game, though I’m not that good to the point where I tailor my builds specifically to the map.

And yeah, ThatGuy whipped me last night in 2 games; The first game I did alright but I let him take his third at the gold without any ability to put pressure on, and then he nydused behind the smoke and I forgot to put a pylon there (though I did spread them everywhere else in the base). Game 2 was just me getting out macrod, tried to do 3 gate expand but never really got Colossus out and never hit before Mutas were on the field, so he had nothing to fear. Had I done a heavy zealot sentry attack earlier I coulda made him regret going just lings.

Went 1 and 1 in league matches last night, lost to a random player (T) because I couldnt’ secure a third and I let him get his PF up on Jungle Basin : (

Funny side note, yesterday I watched an HDStarcraft video where he said it was his first Masters league game. In the game he commentated of himself playing, he attacks the other player and then says “Putting pressure on is causing his Macro to slip, messing up his build order, etc. He has like 600 minerals saved up at this point!” Then he selects his own unit, and has like 800 minerals saved up, and I laughed. I made a comment about that fact, and this morning my email is flooded with youtube comment responses of people saying how I must be a bronzie, how its ok for zerg to have 800 minerals stored up, etc etc. Good times

[N-StradAT9]

Yeah that’s reasonable, they could just peel them back slightly from each natural. Not so much that siege tanks don’t work though, that was part of the original LT and i don’t think it should be outright removed from the map. Protoss player btw.

[fishjie]

you’re not lying, i have a friend who plays a lot of random team and i was watching him play at my house once. he literally stopped building for a good couple minutes while he rolled a joint mid game

hell yeah! smoking a j in the middle of a 4v4 is some high level play right there.

now, question to all you fine folks who play drunken 4v4s. typically, even though i am inebriated, i still somehow end up with the most bases in games. i like to expand aggressively. but i play protoss, and all their units are garbage, so i dont know what to do. i’ve tried blink stalkers which ends up with me blinking away from anything that’s terran because terran are OP. whenever i go mass carriers they die. is mass void ray a good strat? i just don’t know how to transition into that from 4 warp gate, which is how i open on 4v4s. i hate turtling and going void rays directly, because then i can’t expand as easily.

There’s a lot of talk on team liquid about the ladder maps and how it’s really hurting SC2’s popularity in Korea as well as amongst a lot of the foreign pros. While I don’t think that the whole list is HORRIBLE I do think that the majority is clearly geared towards one type of play (honorable exceptions include metalopolis, skakuras, and lost temple when it’s not zvt) but most of it clearly is. What do you guys think of the current ladder map pool?

yeah the blizzard maps are godawful and terrible. steppes of war for example, practically begs the player to go all in and do some cheesy gimmicky rush. worst map ever. nothing wrong with cheesing every once in a while, but when you are forced to do it because the map is terrible, something is wrong. so many blizzard maps have awkward to take 3rds, and so games end up devolving into 2 base timing pushes.

not to mention players have pointed out on a lot of maps there is a lack of symmetry. certain maps on certain positions can wall off easier than others for example. even back in brood war days, blizzard sucked at map making. lost temple is a brood war map, and it was just as awful back then as it is now. and back then, spine crawlers (sunkens) couldn’t relocate, and queens were a tier 2 unit that did not have transfuse, so you couldn’t do fancy fruit dealer micro like he did to stuff hope tortures drop in game 2 of season 1 gsl. other examples of bad blizz maps back in the day, I remember some positions in Hunters had cliffs where you could drop tanks, and some did not. completely arbitrary. punishing the players with random number generator YEAH!

bottom line, blizz needs to outsource their map making to people who know what they are doing, and there needs to be some process where good quality maps go through some vetting process by pros, before they can enter the ladder map pool.

[Pimp_Willy]

I don’t see a problem with a map like steppes, it just means you have to change your playstyle up. Adapting to the map is part of any good players list of talents. If Steppes doesn’t produce 30 minute macro games, and instead is all about who can be the most aggressive best (or who can hold off early aggression while getting economically ahead) I find that interesting. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest Zerg can’t just FE into Drones on every map in the game.

Now granted there shouldn’t be more than one map like that in the pool at any given time, but maps like Steppes keep players on their toes, and I like that.

[Magnifico]

As zerg, i’m finding it hard to dominate a game in my 2v2 matches. I’m always depending on my partner to seal the deal. I’m just now that good w/ zerg… and the more i play them, the more I realize just how hard zerg is.

Mobility is really important in 2v2, even moreso than in 1v1 in some ways, so Zerg is pretty neat in 2v2. Speedlings and Muta are great. Speedlings can cut off isolated players armies when they’re en route to meet up, and dominate the map in general. With a good surround and help from ranged Terran or Toss units, they can much better take on a lot of units that they normally struggle with in 1v1.

Mutas are great in 2v2 because you have twice the number of potential harassment targets to hit

lost temple is a brood war map, and it was just as awful back then as it is now. and back then, spine crawlers (sunkens) couldn’t relocate, and queens were a tier 2 unit that did not have transfuse, so you couldn’t do fancy fruit dealer micro like he did to stuff hope tortures drop in game 2 of season 1 gsl. other examples of bad blizz maps back in the day, I remember some positions in Hunters had cliffs where you could drop tanks, and some did not. completely arbitrary. punishing the players with random number generator YEAH!

yeah original SC1 Blizzard Lost temple had soooo many problems, incredibly large ones such as 6:00 position main base minerals being further away (resulting in reduced income) and the position of the naturals in relation to the main being entirely different from base to base (some bases had naturals in front of the main base’s ramp, others behind it

I don’t see a problem with a map like steppes, it just means you have to change your playstyle up. Adapting to the map is part of any good players list of talents. If Steppes doesn’t produce 30 minute macro games, and instead is all about who can be the most aggressive best (or who can hold off early aggression while getting economically ahead) I find that interesting. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest Zerg can’t just FE into Drones on every map in the game.

Now granted there shouldn’t be more than one map like that in the pool at any given time, but maps like Steppes keep players on their toes, and I like that.

agreed, personally I find Steppes really exciting. As you said extreme maps such as Steppes shouldn’t be more than one of a kind because that way as far as ladder goes those who really really dont wanna play on it can just veto it, but variety in the map pool is cool and I hope they don’t get rid of it

[Natureboy_1]

My biggest problem with a map like steppes is the amount of blind countering you have to do, because you have any time to react. On steppes a zerg absolutely cannot early fast expand vs a 2 rax opening, and you have to make a ton of speedlings and a baneling nest the longer you don’t see a command center. Meanwhile, terran can either be massing marines behind his wall or macroing up with an in base CC.

If you stop making lings and he keeps making marines, you lose. If you keep making lings and he keeps macro’ing, you lose. Not only that but the Terran can scan and see what the zerg is doing, so it’s EXTREMELY tough against a competent player.

I’ve played 2 of the new GSL maps, and I will say that I like them so far. There are plenty of places to hide overlords, there is a nice choke at the natural, and the 3rd base is easy to take.