I actually listen to GSL casts on mute and have for a long time. Getting good at sc2 has ruined esports for me because the casters don’t know what they are talking about and every game state is already mapped out with rare exceptions.
Don’t worry we’ll all be in platinum league if smurfs keep subtracting more mmr out of the regional pool than new players add back in. In theory they could reduce the gm mmr threshold down to 2850.
Nah mech players who turtle are the easiest kind of mech players to beat. You just put 12 or so swarm hosts into a nydus and hit with roach hydra at the same time as locust waves. Some people like ultralisk swarm host with a few corruptors vs the libs but it only works if tempo is in your favor or all your ultras die to ghosts & every position is pre-sieged with mass liberators. Roach hydra hits faster, can kill flying buildings, and has a solution to the liberators that doesn’t require investing into a spire. As an additional bonus, the swarm hosts benefit from the same upgrades as the main army. Ultras by contrast split the attack upgrades & require an entirely new set of upgrades off the spire. So you just go swarmhost roach hydra, keep him on 4 bases & keep his tank count low. You simply move your army around so it’s hard to preposition the tanks & repeatedly reset the rank and hellbat count.
Hellbats have to be reset because it makes the locust waves stronger and the tank count has to be reset because it limits how much space he can control and that makes it impossible to get a 5th base.
This is assuming the terran does a strong version of mech and not a giga-trash version like banshee mech, which simply dies to a 2/2 roach hydra timing because the tank count is too low & he is permanently behind in upgrades. Cyclone mech is also garbage. BC mech would be good because it forces zerg to get a spire to deal with 3-4 bc counter attacks. It makes defense more complicated and offense more complicated because bc teleports can kill nyduses and things like that. But it’s still very bad because you can deflect the first BC while affording a 4th base and total 16/16/16 6/6/6 mineral/gas saturation. Translation, your eco is absolutely huge.
At the end of innovation’s career he was favoring bc openers mainly because a 3 banshee opener is impossible to do in the online tournaments vs EU due to ping. BC mech is way better. Then zergs realized they can massively delay lair, get 12 queens, build a 4th base, deflect the BC, kill a base of SCVs with a baneling counter-attack at the third, and have insane creep spread all at the same time.
There really isn’t a place for mech in any matchup except maybe TvT. But even then the mobility of bio is just bonkers strong in the hands of strong multitasking players. The ability to move your army around quickly is worth its weight in gold. The way innovation won mech v bio games was to plan on losing your eco eventually because you just can’t keep pace. You just have to hit about 160 supply and you do a push. Ironically, losing a base is helpful here because the opponent has a good chunk of supply out of position for the mech timing. It was the tempo play or tempo plays.
But the worst scenario for mech is definitely vs protoss. Literally everything protoss makes hard counters mech units and that is not an exaggeration in the slightest. Literally everything hard counters mech. And it’s not a soft counter – it’s a hard counter. Everything from zealots to stalkers to immortals. I think the only unit that is bad vs mech is the phoenix, maybe the void ray.
The current map styles play a role too. The more complicated map layouts make mech defense harder because mech defense is about prepositioning. You can’t react to attacks after the fact. The new maps make that harder, especially vs blink. Liberator and mine nerfs also play a role. Liberator affects tvz and tvp and mine affects only tvp.
Personally if I were designing mech I’d make the liberation zones shaped like an elipse. It makes them stronger vs units moving towards the liberators and worse when moving perpendicular. This would make it harder for liberators to shut down protoss’ mineral lines while making the liberator better vs zealot amoves. Widow mines should just be buffed and if toss lose probes it’s 100% a skill issue. They just don’t watch the minimap enough and/or move their camera around enough. That’s why I stress the screen movements per minute metric. It’s obvious that that is the issue and not the mine drop.
Bring back drilling claw mine drop builds, make the liberation zones elliptical, and mech would probably do alright.
Am I forced to have any regret?