General


The StarCraft II Editor is now available!
Players will now be able to begin creating trigger maps in preparation for map publishing which will be made available in an upcoming beta patch.
Achievements & Decals are now live!
Players will now be able to earn achievements, browse the list of available achievements, and view achievements earned by friends.
Players will be able to highlight favorite achievements in their Showcase.
Earning certain achievements will unlock portrait and decal rewards.
The updated Homepage now includes a Recent Broadcasts panel and a News & Community panel.
A new Match History page is now available which will allow players to browse and filter their last 1,000 games played.
A new Community page is now available which features an in-game version of RSS news feeds.
A new Friends-of-Friends feature has been added, which allows players to easily find and connect with more real life friends on Battle.net through existing friends.
Additional friends’ presence details are now available from the Friends’ list.
Improvements have been made on the Voice Chat system in game.
Please use the new voice chat and provide feedback via the StarCraft II beta forums.
The score screen now features a new graph tab.
The art for many parts of the user interface has been updated.
Hotkey templates have been added.
In the gameplay options menu select from standard name based hotkeys for right and left-handed players, grid based hotkeys for right, and left-handed players, and classic StarCraft keys.
Several hotkeys have been changed to avoid conflicts with the "Select All Warpgates" UI button:
The Set Worker Rally Point has been changed from W to R.
Build Sensor Tower has been changed from W to N.
Terran Infantry Weapons have been changed from W to E.
Terran Vehicle Weapons have been changed from W to E.
Weapon Refit has been changed from W to R.
Burrow has been changed from W to R.
Spawn Larva has been changed from R to V.
Neural Parasite has been changed from R to E.

Balance Changes


TERRAN
Marauder
Concussive Shells research cost decreased from 100/100 80 seconds to 50/50 60 seconds.


PROTOSS
Immortal
Build time increased from 40 to 55.


ZERG
Infested Terran
Damage increased from 5 to 8.
Speed decreased from 1.5 to 0.9375.
Queen
Speed off creep decreased from 1.5 to 0.938. (Speed on creep unchanged.)
Spine Crawler
Attack period decreased from 1.6 to 1.85.
Infestor
Neural Parasite range increased from 7 to 9.
Fungal Growth projectile removed; Units in the target area are now instantly hit.

Maps


We've made a change to the (2)ScrapStation map to make the natural expansion easier to defend.
New maps have been added to the ladder rotation while others have been removed as follows:
1v1
Added (2)IncinerationZone
2v2
Removed (4)LostTemple
Removed (4)Metalopolis
Added (4)AridWastes
Added (4)Coalition
Added (4)Decena
Added (4)ScorchedHaven
1v1(Novice)
Removed (4)NoviceKulasRavine
2v2(Novice)
Removed (4)NoviceKulasRavine
Removed (4)NoviceShakurasPlateau
Added (4)NoviceDecena
Added (4)NoviceScorchedHaven
Added (4)NoviceTwilightFortress

damn this is a huge patch
finally get to play around with the map editor

I don't really like the queen nerf on speed. It's going to ruin my favorite zvz tactic

the marauder buff is so unbelievably retarded, i have no idea what they were thinking
_________________

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman
A normal person wouldn't say that in real life because it's ridiculous and insulting. Yet here you are spouting the most hateful garbage that your demons can muster out of your darkened soul. All because of the internet.

---

IDK but I know personally once they forced it as an upgrade I basically stopped using it until mid-late game anyway. They probably found a lot of others doing the same thing so they made it a bit less painful to get. I don't think they probably gave it enough time to simmer with people because I mean if you take something away from somebody they're probably going to adapt to playing the same way without it until they realize it's importance..

the problem with it is, at least from a toss player point of view, is that the slow coming by default so early made it so early marauders could totally wreck toss armies through endless kiting. stalkers already get raped by marauders without the upgrade, zealots should be the natural counter but they get kited so badly they're useless, and sentries cost too much gas to have a decent number that early

last patch fixed this but made terran really vulnerable to early immortal pushes from toss. so, in that respect i think the immortal nerf is not that big of a deal, it evens the playing field a little when it comes to that early immortal push. however, now that the conc grenades only cost as much gas as a reaper and take less time to research, marauders very well might be overpowered over early toss armies again, because the conc is going to come earlier and cheaper (especially now that the decreased cost lessens the stim vs. conc grenade tension of the early game) and the immortal is going to take longer to buiild, and early toss army without immortals has absolutely no counter to marauders with slow whatsoever

this is theorycraft since i haven't played it yet but i'm pretty concerned. the slow is a really fucking good ability, and its available at tier 1 for just 50/50. this already on a ranged unit with 125 (i think?) hit points and 10 damage (20 to armored). tier 1 toss units don't get any upgrades until the expensive ones at the twilight council (toss units are already pretty good admittedly) and speedlings, another really good tier 1 upgrade, costs 100/100. so why the hell is conc so cheap????
_________________

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman
A normal person wouldn't say that in real life because it's ridiculous and insulting. Yet here you are spouting the most hateful garbage that your demons can muster out of your darkened soul. All because of the internet.

---

what retard? did u say something?

well I haven't played much sc2 lately but I can see this moving the matchup closer to the bw version where protoss generally open with quick dragoon range and zealot speed along with robo bay strictly for observers which I don't really think is a bad idea since it makes the game more fun. IMO Immortals are newbie units that look cool and are powerful but I mean they're boring as hell to control. They're basically walking tanks with no special abilities.

I can see them being fun as a kind of focal point to micro your army around but I don't think toss should be stomping up the battlefield with 4 of them and a few other units 5 minutes into the game.

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman@can
well I haven't played much sc2 lately but I can see this moving the matchup closer to the bw version where protoss generally open with quick dragoon range and zealot speed along with robo bay strictly for observers which I don't really think is a bad idea since it makes the game more fun.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman
A normal person wouldn't say that in real life because it's ridiculous and insulting. Yet here you are spouting the most hateful garbage that your demons can muster out of your darkened soul. All because of the internet.

---

well blink is basically the same thing as a range upgrade in this context. You get slowed and you blink right up in their face. Anyway I'm making the bw comparison just because I think the developers want to keep the same 'feel' of the races as in bw in the end product. If you're countering a straight up marauder rush you're probably going to get charge which might seem expensive on gas but considering mass zealots cost 0 gas while mass marauders cost tons of gas it evens out. I think you'll see blink as a counter to mech terran which isn't really an early game build right now.

that makes more sense but blink still isn't a great counter since blink takes actual micro and slowing marauders just takes a+right click

immortals are a good counter to marauders and they should stay that way, and in fact they will stay that way in the long run. its just the early game timing sounds like it might be fucked up now. in the timing window where early marauders with slow will fuck your shit up you're not going to be able to have blink or charge if you don't have enough immortals to deal with it either, both of those upgrades take longer to finish than an immortal
_________________

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman
A normal person wouldn't say that in real life because it's ridiculous and insulting. Yet here you are spouting the most hateful garbage that your demons can muster out of your darkened soul. All because of the internet.

---

next time you play terran try opening with charge/mass zealots and see what happens. I'm pretty sure that you'll have enough time to get charge with chrono boost before he's able to push out with conc shells and i'm pretty sure that your zealots will rape the shit out of his marauders

i have a lot of games played, and i'm high gold and get matched regularly against mid and upper-mid level plat players, and i can tell you there's absolutely no way in hell

immortals are pretty vital to the pvt game, there's lots of games where my immortals will get out just barely in time to defend against his marauder push with the patch 8 conc shell cost and time. charge is good but it's not as good as a couple immortals and it takes longer

i'm not trying to be condescending but if this worked so well, good people would have been doing it in patch 8, when it would have been even better. did you see them doing this? no, they made immortals
_________________

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman
A normal person wouldn't say that in real life because it's ridiculous and insulting. Yet here you are spouting the most hateful garbage that your demons can muster out of your darkened soul. All because of the internet.

---

well I'm just guessing but it seems to make sense. I'm going to try it out of curiosity anyway although my patch is bugging out in an endless loop right now

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman@can
patch is bugging out in an endless loop right now

---

you guys still having this prob?

I had that problem, closed everything and retried and it worked

But bnet is down for maintence, just lookin at the map edtior atm


Disapointing balance patch though

Protoss alrdy have a probless with Maurders, esp when it gets to late game

I was hopin for a maybe +10 gas increase because there too cheap for there strength

Was hopin the phoneix wuld get a buff to counter mutas better as well

Forcefield needs to be increased mana to 65

blizzard broke their game!



12 lings in 2:30? LAWLALWLWL

first placement match, i lose to what i thought was just a cheesy 6pool. i didnt scout and saw lings come in so i insta quit.

Game 5 placement match, it happened again. This time i realized that there were more htan 6 lings in my base.

How is ti done?

10 lord
10 pool
build drone. When new larva spawns, cancel drone
build 2x drone
when new larva spawns, cancel 2 drones
build 3 drones
when new larva spawns, cancel drones

when pool finishes, you will have 6 larva read to go.
_________________
"I tend to thougoughly enjoy my encounters significantly more with 120+ types, as I find them more stimulating. 100-110 people are okay too operating at full capacity." - Paper_Boy

I wonder if that was an issue before the patch. It seems kind of funny that multiple people would discover this trick which basically involves doing something that hurts you to figure out an exploit within hours of the patch being released.

lollll thats ridiculous

and no it wasn't in there before the patch, if it was people would have been doing it. there's some kind of bug (i'm assuming its a bug, because if its intentional then blizzard must be staffed by literal retarded babies. but then again they thought marauder needed to be buffed, so maybe they are this dumb) where if you start hatching from a larva and then cancel the egg, you don't lose the larva like you used to. so if you have 3 larva and hatch one into a drone and then cancel that drone hatch, instead of the larva going away and you having to wait for it to spawn again the larva is still there. once people figured out that you don't lose a larva from cancelling it was only a matter of time (like probably minutes) before someone figured out how this could be exploited

between this, the completely unnecessary and retarded marauder buff, and the fact that they fucked up the UI so you can't chronoboost/spawn larva by clicking on the portraits makes this a contender for worst patch ever despite all the interface improvements. w2g blizz
_________________

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman
A normal person wouldn't say that in real life because it's ridiculous and insulting. Yet here you are spouting the most hateful garbage that your demons can muster out of your darkened soul. All because of the internet.

---

btw are you really switching to terran? lawl
_________________

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman
A normal person wouldn't say that in real life because it's ridiculous and insulting. Yet here you are spouting the most hateful garbage that your demons can muster out of your darkened soul. All because of the internet.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Sypher
blizzard broke their game!



12 lings in 2:30? LAWLALWLWL

first placement match, i lose to what i thought was just a cheesy 6pool. i didnt scout and saw lings come in so i insta quit.

Game 5 placement match, it happened again. This time i realized that there were more htan 6 lings in my base.

How is ti done?

10 lord
10 pool
build drone. When new larva spawns, cancel drone
build 2x drone
when new larva spawns, cancel 2 drones
build 3 drones
when new larva spawns, cancel drones

when pool finishes, you will have 6 larva read to go.

---

if you scout after first depot/pylon (which you should be doing anyway if you're any good) you can catch them doing it and you can wall up/get a cannon, and if you hold it off and they don't kill you they're totally fucked just like a 6 pool. its still really horribly broken though obviously
_________________

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman
A normal person wouldn't say that in real life because it's ridiculous and insulting. Yet here you are spouting the most hateful garbage that your demons can muster out of your darkened soul. All because of the internet.

---

patch 9 sucks but im good at sc2

i play zerg and i hate the new spawn larva. it's difficult to tell how many non spawning larva i have now. I know you can cancel and change them but you generally don't unless you're getting attacked or something.

not being able to click hatchery icon is also a mega pain in the ass after playing ~100 games and getting so used to doing it. at least the terran and protoss macro mechanics don't have you going back to base (or mini map clicking also extremel tedious) every 40 secs the entire game regardless of everything. i already disliked the zerg macro mechanic because apart from a single creep tumor here or there you're basically spawning additional larva every 40 secs the entire game. at least the other races macro required some decision making.

it kinda sucks for toss too since a lot of toss players will have a control group with nexuses and buildings and then chrono the building portraits so they don't have to go back to their base. but yeah, it definitely hurts zerg the most, they're way more reliant on spawn larva and the opportunity cost of missing a spawn is higher than missing a mule or a chrono

so basically its an indirect terran buff the race didn't need at all to go alongside the hilariously retarded marauder buff. i'm liking this "buff units that don't need it" policy, maybe next they'll make force field cost 25 mana and last twice as long or increase muta splash damage
_________________

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman
A normal person wouldn't say that in real life because it's ridiculous and insulting. Yet here you are spouting the most hateful garbage that your demons can muster out of your darkened soul. All because of the internet.

---

some ideas :
send your first zealot and attack his supply depot wallin until it's shield energy is gone. he will lose resources repairing and using up an svc that could be gathering. once you get a few stalkers up there u can try an early break. Terran are very vulnerable within the first few minutes of the game when they're marauder rushing.

If that doesn't work then send in sentries and cockblock his choke to stall his push or better yet cut half of his units out and rape the other half then go in for the kill. He'll probably give up getting out either way and wait for dropships. Make phoenix and pick them off. Terran don't make any anti air when they are marauder rushing.

If they're coming at you with marauders and you're worried just pull off 10 probes and use them as fodder in the fight.

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman@can
some ideas :
send your first zealot and attack his supply depot wallin until it's shield energy is gone. he will lose resources repairing and using up an svc that could be gathering. once you get a few stalkers up there u can try an early break. Terran are very vulnerable within the first few minutes of the game when they're marauder rushing.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman@can
If that doesn't work then send in sentries and cockblock his choke to stall his push or better yet cut half of his units out and rape the other half then go in for the kill.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman@can
He'll probably give up getting out either way and wait for dropships. Make phoenix and pick them off. Terran don't make any anti air when they are marauder rushing.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman@can
If they're coming at you with marauders and you're worried just pull off 10 probes and use them as fodder in the fight.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman
A normal person wouldn't say that in real life because it's ridiculous and insulting. Yet here you are spouting the most hateful garbage that your demons can muster out of your darkened soul. All because of the internet.

---

you don't need an appreciable number of stalkers.. that's what you're missing here. You're attacking him early before he gets upgrades and before he has been able to produce an 'appreciable' number of marauders. you attack him with 1 zealot right at the start send another one as it completes by then u should be making a stalker and researching warp gate and getting another gateway then proxy him and keep him choked up in his base then u bust out sentries to keep him contained while u get phoenix.

You're mindset seems to be 'build a ball of units and attack'
what i'm getting at is terran are weak in the early game so you need to exploit it. If you don't then you're basically letting them exploit your race's weakness (mid game)

and no terran dont get air defense early in the game when they're marauder rushing because that completely eliminates the point of doing a rush. They get medivacs first not valkries and they dont make many marines which aren't going to help a few loaded up medivacs going in for a drop (which is the point of doing the early harass)

if you have to pull 10 workers because as i said you are worried about losing the fight then i don't understand how u can't see a significance in that. You must be one of those players like jon that leaves as soon as they lose a unit.

edit: also the phoenix thing is just given one circumstance of many that might play out. if u have him cockblocked with sentries at his choke he has no choice but to dropship right? or he'll get siege tanks which takes forever but your main concern with marauders is that they rape you early correct?

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman@can
you don't need an appreciable number of stalkers.. that's what you're missing here. You're attacking him early before he gets upgrades and before he has been able to produce an 'appreciable' number of marauders. you attack him with 1 zealot right at the start send another one as it completes by then u should be making a stalker and researching warp gate and getting another gateway then proxy him and keep him choked up in his base then u bust out sentries to keep him contained while u get phoenix.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman@can
You're mindset seems to be 'build a ball of units and attack'

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman@can
and no terran dont get air defense early in the game when they're marauder rushing because that completely eliminates the point of doing a rush. They get medivacs first not valkries and they dont make many marines which aren't going to help a few loaded up medivacs going in for a drop (which is the point of doing the early harass)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by turtleman
A normal person wouldn't say that in real life because it's ridiculous and insulting. Yet here you are spouting the most hateful garbage that your demons can muster out of your darkened soul. All because of the internet.

---