StarCraft II Battle Report Three

[Wankey]

Airforce seems incredibly useless in this game. Why did the zerg not tech to mutas? Roach should get anti-air.

[DemolitionSquid]

Airforce seems incredibly useless in this game. Why did the zerg not tech to mutas? Roach should get anti-air.

Roach should NOT get AA. The Hydra should be the Zerg's primary GTA. Remember, Zerg are cheap. They have a relatively easy time switching tech. The high regeneration and low cost of the Roach makes it already quite powerful, as was see in the new BR. In a fight between a Roach and Hydra, the Roach will win. If we want to keep the Hydra in the game, it needs a one-up on the Roach. That up is a longer range, and GTA ability. Also, as you said, air is looking quite weak. If we want to improve it, we need to make its counters less available or weaker. By making the Hydra more specialized in GTA, we make air stronger and give the Hydra a strong niche.

[Wankey]

well, they've put hydras on a lower tier than roaches now... which makes a hell of a lot more sense. Back to their 1.5 tier

Roaches I believe are now tier 2?

[Gritten]

This is just speculation, but I believe the reason we're not seeing high level tech / very in depth games is for the following reasons:

1) They're working to keep the Battle Reports somewhat short
2) During internal testing, those playing have most likely been given specific test criterial to test balance. And these are the games we're given to see
Example: Stick to units x,y,z. Try to maximize abilities x,y,z. Do not use this particular unit
3) They most likely don't want to show off EVERYTHING at once.

Gritten

[Wankey]

I also have a firm belief that this BR3 is actually recorded before BR2.

[DemolitionSquid]

well, they've put hydras on a lower tier than roaches now... which makes a hell of a lot more sense. Back to their 1.5 tier

Roaches I believe are now tier 2?

No. Roaches are available right after Zerglings. They cost 100 minerals. Hydras have been lowered to the same tier, but they are generalists with powerful GTA, wheras the roach obliterates anything biological like Zealots or Marines.

[SpiderBrigade]

Airforce seems incredibly useless in this game.

DK actually could have done devastating damage if he'd produced more than that one Phoenix/Void Ray pair, since the Zerg player had nothing that could hit air except for Queens...on the other hand, he had Lair tech so he could have popped out some quick Corrupters which might be why DK stuck to ground troops.

Why did the zerg not tech to mutas?

Probably because the Protoss force consisted largely of Stalkers and Disrupters, which can both hit air. And he was at too much of an econ disadvantage to rush to mutas (he would have gotten swamped with ground troops before he got there).

Roach should get anti-air.

You're kidding, right? No one would ever bother to build Hydralisks, at that point.

[kxr1der]

You can really see how imba the protoss macro mechanic is in this battle report. I think the zerg and the protoss both look like a lot of fun to play but the zerg player just could not keep up economically. The banelings and the colossus took out a uge amount of protoss units and still David Kim was able to steam roll the other player... it wasnt even close.

I also have a problem with stalkers. Ive seen them used in this video as well as sonkie vs yellow and both times it seems with great micro the zerg just cant do damage fast enough to kill these things. I like blink dont get me wrong but there were so many roaches and he just couldnt kill them in time. I think nerfing the stalkers health a bit would be a good idea. No idea what to do about the macro mechanic though... it just seems too good to me.

Maybe if everytime you used it, it would hurt the probes health (not shields). That way you could only use it a few times and u would actally have to choose whether or not u wanted to use it or conserve probe health.

[Zigurd]

SPOILARS:

Nice fucking game. Although I feel they are somewhat pushing limitations for these battlereports. How did David produce zero Observers is beyond me, or even Dark Templar because the Zerg had no detection available. A couple of sneaky DTs would have ravaged the Zerg.

I did love to see Nullifiers get used. Force field is a very interesting, original and useful ability. Blink proves to make Stalkers twice more durable and effective. I also loved how burrow was used in such a good boosting form for the Zerg.

I am worried for air forces though. I am also worried about epic scale battles. Everything seems like squad battles, nothing epic about that. It's all pure micro, which is good... but having 100+ psi in the battlefield killing stuff is impressive on it's own.

[Noise]

It was the fuckin Proton Charge from those Obelisks.

I still hate this mechanic. It also looks totally ridiculous in the video.