Unless you’re Protoss. Then you just kind of win.
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What has race to do with that?
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There’s probably some sort of correlation with a willingness to demean yourself and MMR as Protoss, honestly.
The hardest thing is coming up with optimal builds that can deal with anything that comes your way. People just copy that. Everyone who plays at GM is already playing at a competent level, simply because they copied someone else. Sure there’s still decision making going on, but there’s a limit to how bad you can fare when you’ve copied the smartest way to play the game.
The “brains” behind SC 2 can be copied by even the dumbest person and emulated. Whereas… you can’t just copy someone’s micro and APM. Thus… the biggest difference maker is APM and micro. The things which are harder to copy/can’t be copied.
If you do something smart or have a revelation, you’re given a window of time to utilize it before everyone else catches on and “becomes you.” 99% of the time… what matters is the APM and micro, not playing smart, given that’s canceled out, unfortunately.
All the pros have the same APM, more or less, for a reason. Until pros are forced to use their own builds… it will always be that way. If they were forced to use their own builds… they would be far, far worse. But, they don’t have to rely on their on thinking much.
I feel like the idea of this thread is why I think talking is kinda “pointless/dumb,” though. Like the natural speed of prose just lends itself to shallow talk or half baked answers at best. If someone actually took the time required to think something through, then things would be “awkward.” It’s just a really primitive way of communicating, as is, honestly. Bad strat.
Kind of like a guy that doesn’t get the DT blink upgrade when they incorporate DTs as their standard late game tech.
I get dts to make archons. SC 2 is a stupid game. There’s really not much point in harassing past the early game. I’m not being facetious/sarcastic. For instance, I opened dt harass or w/e you want to cal it every game in P vs P, in HotS. I never once did, say, a dt drop late game in P vs P. Absolutely counter productive.
The risk/reward for harassing late game is incredibly skewed to risk. You just make as big of a death ball as possible and try to kill their army. This isn’t BW where assembling your entire army and a-moving was a challenge/impossible. Devoting supply to harass just makes you vulnerable to dying to their army or reducing your ability to crush their army. Trying to harass or spending any attention on it just delays you from maxing and killing their army.
Plus, with Terran… late game? You don’t even know if you want to kill scvs or not. You really don’t want the other guy’s army supply simply increasing and his eco still being fine due to mules. You run into this problem in like all matchups.
There’s also too much to do late game. I can’t be bothered to remember my dts have blink, given 100% of the time they don’t… One day, I’d like to better utilize that ability vs Terran early on, but afraid that day will never be.
How can you not get the blink for DT’s? Makes them so much more fun to use.
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I think we proved OPs point in this sentence alone.
It is fun and honestly abusive if not broken, early on. But, I’ve seen so many people lose games to me simply because “they were having too much fun.” It’s like… you can only lose 10 dts at once zero times… before you’ve lost the game 100% of the time. It’s like people get DT blink, thinking they’ve researched “invincibility.” It’s like bruh… you open blink stalkers every game. Are your stalkers ever immortal? Take it easy non champ.
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There are other uses for a lone (not 12 DT) in PvT (and PvZ) . The main one is to force terran to switch the attention elsewhere while you are attacking in another direction.
Personally i have never been a great fan of the 16DT squad that goes around killing Bases.
As you rightly said: it weakens too much your main army and the cost/benefit is dubious.
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I think the biggest abuse/thing to exploit is simply the ability for a dt to jump into one’s base. That’s mostly an early game thing, though. I’ve tried builds that rely on that vs Terran. It’s fun, at the least. But, overall, I think dt openings are atrocious and not viable in LotV. This is coming from the number 1 DT abuser/user in HotS. They were the most solid way to play P vs P and P vs T in HotS. So, it took a lot to hear this 180.
I feel like DT blink is just a distraction. It’s compelling people to make more dts than they really should. It’s like a bad habit that no one can avoid. Like you want to get your monies worth for the upgrade… thus you think it means you have to make more dts, when really… it just means… better utilize the dts you were going to make anyways.
Until a person can simply abide by that mindset, they probably shouldn’t get the upgrade. In the end, how many games is DT blink really going to win someone? What % is really getting decided by the fact you chose to get that upgrade? It just seems so minuscule, that it basically should be the last thing on one’s mind or the last thing to cross off the “list of perfection.”
Maybe if I jumped on a spore asap or w/e, I’d win 1 more game than I otherwise would out of 200… It’s w/e, but worth keeping in one’s mind/noting, I guess.
Ya in PvP they aren’t as good probably. It’s funner to blink onto planetaries and hives.
You were saying you have trouble taking a planetary out. Blink 12 DTS on it first then a-move the rest of your army on it. Shouldn’t have any problems then.
It actually comes from Co-op. Vorazun has DTS. And you can get blink for them. People blinking 100 DTS on the train map is what gave blizzard the idea to put it in Multi.
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I’m not reading through the thread, but yes, SC2 is not a game that is based on intelligence, but rather APM and practice. You don’t have to be smart to do ling/bane/muta, but you do have to be fast and have had lots of practice doing it.
Even chess is mostly a game of pattern recognition and practice.
In fact, not many things do take sheer intelligence. I don’t know how to measure intelligence, but IQ tests aren’t it, SC2 isn’t it, being good at chess isn’t.
Academia is an alright sign, as I never met a chemistry grad student who wasn’t intelligent, or medical school student who wasn’t intelligent. They make dumb decisions from time to time, but it’s all relative.
Ah ok you’re diamond, checks out
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yes, my IQ is low because I’m currently diamond.
Unfortunately, I had to sacrifice GM in SC2 to publish chemistry papers in my early 20’s and become a surgeon in my later 20’s. My bad, should have stuck to SC2 to prove intelligence.
I don’t want to spoon feed you here, but if anything you just proved my point. SC2 has almost nothing to do with intelligence.
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I’m pure math undergrad, I have meet truly genious people, one of my friends have 9.8 average score in freaking pure math and he is diamond, he is just sh_t at videogames and don’t have fast fingers.
SC2 players think too much of themselves if they think they are genious people just because they hit GM lol. Wasn’t Avilo GM?
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Everybody hits GM now. It’s like Archon Mode GM. Several tens of streamers that were stuck in diamond, masters and even platinum now all brag how they are in GM.
It’s a matter of playing enough. These streamers are so greedy they play so much to try to make money, that even the scrubs are in GM now.
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But now to be honest game quality is down people play rly bad lately for instance i hover in diamond now cause i have life (i know i know it’s dangerous to go outside momas basement but i had to believe me there was no other way)
and dia people doo some stupid things that i did in gold back in wol
for instance i played pvp where opponent went fast exp in to 2 adept pressure but after expansion…
pvt heavy 1 base marine with tank or liberators but no worker pull and we talk unupgraded marines out of 4 racks
pvz they go 3 base spam drones and hope its still patch where they autowin in late game or 1 base spam lings or roach ravager
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The same can be said for those people as well. I have met people who are very good at applying math to known applications, but if they were ever asked to adapt it to a new application or to derive their own solution to a new problem, they’d fall flat on their face. They are good at following complicated rules in other words, but lack any and all understanding of how those rules were derived nor having the creativity to derive their own nor the limitations of those rules and when they no longer apply.
Just because you can follow the steps in an algorithm to compute an answer doesn’t mean you’re smart. It’s basically the same as a SC2 build. You have a list of things you need to do in order to get to the answer and you have to put out the occasional fire that can throw off your final answer. Humans are REALLY good at rote memorization.
Anyone can learn a strong build and memorize the steps to make it happen. The actual underlying reasoning of why that build is strong is much more complicated and creating new strong builds based on that reasoning is even more complicated. Most of the people in SC2 have near zero creativity skills and just spam the same build orders that have existed for years and years, maybe making some minor tweaks to it. Green university graduates give me the same exact vibe. They have memorized algorithms that have existed for hundreds of years and graduate thinking they are some kind of geniuses when in reality anyone could do it if they put their mind to it using sheer rote memorization alone.
It’s the same skill used to memorize the notes to play the piano, or to memorize builds in SC2, just applied to mathematics instead. It’s an extremely common skillset.
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I’d compare it more to a sort of behavioral therapy at any reasonable level of play over a sustained period of time. It’s definitely increased my ability to think ‘faster’ or rather, enact my thoughts more rapidly while training me to predict a lot of scenarios a little better via logical deduction but it absolutely hasn’t made me smarter.