The Harstem meme?

when serral scout proxy barracks - he win 90% games.
when top level toss scout 3rd hatcher after 2 queens - he cant do anything

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That happens as a product of superior execution, not build order counters.

Kingcobra, do you have any thoughts on stalker, disruptor? To me, it’s the simpleton comp. You don’t have to think about anything. Disruptors counter all ground and stalkers protect the disruptors.

2 units. Counters everything. There is a huge difference between playing vs someone who is transitioning into this comp in the late game (manageable) and playing vs someone who opens with this (Disk). I saw someone over 1k below Parting easily beat him with this comp the other day. Parting was in utter disbelief.

To me, the only real “counter” to this comp is to have WAY better of an economy. You need things like 2 stargates + an eco to make up for the fact you won’t trade cost efficiently. No one starts off a game with those ingredients… However, anyone can start a game off with stalkers and disruptors.

I always assumed players refrained from doing this as sort of a gentleman’s agreement rather than “we think this is bad.” I don’t get Toss players.

Harstem moaned and moaned about carrier, disruptor in P vs P, yet he honestly/seriously thinks disruptor, stalker is the pinnacle of skill. Not even being sarcastic… 100% of the time someone opens stalker, disruptor vs me… I just run into the shots to get the game over with. That’s how much RTS and skill is involved in these games.

It reminds me of a person who would call slot machines the pinnacle of skill and then say no one should play poker because there is too much luck involved. That’s Harstem, in my eyes. Call me crazy, though.

Well…they have easy access to all kinds of drugs in netherlands, that might be it

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Harstem, the self proclaimed master of PvP, who with mass shield battery still managed to lose to fewer stalkers and a single prism.

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You could try waiting on creep where you have ling speed built in. Those 2cadepts don’t hit THAT long before you will get ling speed, even with 3 hatch. But yeah, adepts or chargelots should kill you if you 3 hatch.

Right but with a hatchery before queens you only have 1 queen. The adepts can threaten up to 3 places at once by positioning between the natural and third. You can only defend 2 (lings, queen).

Well here we come to the real reason for 3 hatch being silly: by the time you have enough drones to start saturating the third, you have ling speed. So why rush the third hatch so much? Slightly more larva in the long run. Is it worth it? Probably not.

Korean zergs do it that way while EU zergs go double queen. The reason being that a third hatch produce more larvae than double queens.

Pvp is my worst matchup

Harstems understanding of the game is superb and highly technical.

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It’s largely a philosophical thing. I believe if I’ve gotten ahead in the game via 20 different things, incrementally building an advantage, then the game probably shouldn’t be a stalemate. In fact, it would be a crime/stupid if it were.

People whose fav comp is stalker, disruptor (Harstem) believe they should always be able to win, because no matter how far behind they got… it was probably due to bad luck.

I believe there is a such thing as… you’re behind in the game because you deserve to be. During the stalker, disruptor era, no one would ever leave a game. Your opponent could have 50 supply and zero mining, and he would refuse to leave the game, even if you had the same comp but 4x the units.

Games came down to who had more free time/tolerance for stupidity than who actually deserved to win. It was an absolutely outrageous time that was no better than playing in the swarm host era in HotS. In fact, it was worse.

Given that… and most pros don’t share Harstem’s view in regards to the disruptor style… it’s really annoying to see this guy become the “voice for P vs P.” If he had it his way… even more people would quit this game, due this love for a strategy that is literally more offensive than cannon rushing.

That’s what it ultimately boils down to. People who want get out jail for free cards with disruptors as opposed to people who believe in earning your advantages, growing leads, and gradually sealing the deal. You know… how SC had always been…

There is nothing more obnoxious than a stalker, disruptor player. They use this antiRTS comp, and then they mock their opponent if he tries to go carriers. They’re completely in shock that their opponent would be “dumb enough” to tech to carriers. It’s like… wtf do you think is the counter to mass stalker, mass disruptor? They laugh because they realize stalker, disruptor counters that, too.

They want you to have to make the same comp as them to have a chance to win. It’s insane that anyone could call this their fav comp, yet talk about this mu. No one wants to hear that (except disk).

Probably friendly support for uthermal, they r friends, he doesn’t want to upset and we know how much uthermal loves TvP, his worst mu

Well i would hate to break it for you but harstem is not a stalker, disruptor player
He mostly plays archon,immortal,zealot and sometimes he mixes colossus too.

Most people who make disruptors are doing it because they are far behind but if your opponent is behind you can easily transition to phoenix and cancel the 2-3 novas he will have.

I was watching his stream, a month ago, when he explicitly said that stalker, disruptor was his favorite style in P vs P. The style he has the most success with and the style that he thinks is the most skillful. That’s from his mouth. He even went on to say even more, to truly suggest it’s the pinnacle of skill…

If you were to bring back the mothership and let him comfortably expand and then do w/e he wants, guess what he’s going back to doing… 1) It’s his most successful style. 2) He’s one of the few people in the world who enjoys doing it…

Toss has had zero success in LotV since Neeb was winning tournaments, yet they all act like they’ve figured out how you need to play. Harstem even thinks P vs T is too easy… Meanwhile, the Terrans who are always beating him… suggest the matchup is too hard. Made him their b. Who the h is so hellbent on copying players who never win? Such a weird group of people.

These guys don’t even care if units like the tempest aren’t even remotely viable. As long as you give them a stalker to do blink micro with, they’re going to be thoroughly entertained. Easier to entertain a professional Toss player than it is a dog. What do they care if Toss doesn’t have late game units. They just want to all-in or only make stalkers, anyways.

Hate everything about this race, thanks in part to players like this.

Have you guys ever played NFL Blitz or similar games with crazy comeback mechanics? To the Harstems of the world, those games would be called the pinnacle of competitive gaming. They need to start drug testing.

Pal i have watch his stream many times and he rarely builds disruptors in pvp, he also memes a lot about the “protoss op” QQ but only as a joke. At least this is how i perceive it.

Anyway the only warping thing about pvp is the proxy robo, everything you do resolves around that because if it is unscouted you just lose, i am not even sure if you can afford to expand against it or you have to just stay on 1 base. Thankfully in my ladder games everyone who does it proxies it in the exact same position in most maps so it is easy to scout.

Regardless of what he builds, it’s his favorite style and is what he would like to return to doing. He 100% said all of what I attributed to him in regards to that style. Ask him sometime.

I couldn’t care less about facing proxy robo. I view it as a free win. Every build has a counter. Stop being a monkey and proxying your tech buildings every game. You can’t expect much thinking from someone who wants a game to stay as simple as “make stalkers and disruptors and that’s it.”

Proxy robo would only become problematic to me if I had a hard on for making a certain comp, such as stalker, disruptor. Because your opening build might need to be a certain way that doesn’t smoothly transition into it.

The dream for the player who hates strategy with a passion, is to open up mothership to counter every aggression, into stalker, disruptor. There’s nothing your opponent can do except do the same thing, and, as a “micro player,” this is your wet dream.

Anytime there is a new RTS, the thing most likely to have everyone agree the game sucks/isn’t good is if there aren’t enough units or buildings to make. In Harstem’s world… there are only 2 units and everyone but him hates the game.

Well players will try and push their strong suit, parting is a good example, his unit composition makes no sense but his very good micro makes the difference.

If you want to blame someone blame the developer, from wol and afterwards they tried to systematically remove most strategic elements of the game and made execution a lot more important.

Yep. Exactly. I think people need to be cognizant of the reality that the “best players” are often times simply a product of w/e the game’s style/design caters to more.

Like in P vs P, there are players who will ALL-IN EVERY GAME. They could bring back the mothership and even buff it, and these players would end up with a 0% win rate, but persist. However, if you remove the defender’s advantage… now all of the sudden they’re the best P vs P player on the ladder.

Most players, to a large degree, are at the mercy of design and having optimal play suit their strengths/preferences.

I tend to be of the belief that it’s a far greater tragedy that Minigun has to struggle to get into GM than it is “x pro has to make more than 2 types of units to win.”

It will never cease to amaze me how these guys livelihoods can depend on the game yet they can just say nothing about units like the tempest, year after year. Are there weak Terran units? Units that aren’t viable? How about Zerg? At some point, you gotta be smarter… whether macro play or w/e is your cup of tea… you gotta advocate for your obviously UP units to be made stronger.

If more units were viable… you might realize, hey… using stuff that is good is my new style and by far my most successful one. I’m tired of watching pro gamers lose supreme late game with basic, low tier units vs max tier 3 and then acting confused.

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Harstem is a good guy. Hovewer he lost his credibility when I saw one of his video “OP or you suck” where he highlighted each single error of the protoss player (was a PvZ) meanwhile almost not saying anything about the countless errors of the zerg player.

It is a extreme superation feeling example. He always will think that he lost because he played badly. Even when a clear imbalance patch is in live. This kind of inverse bias is really weird and I love it.

Whatever, with credibility or not, I love this guy haha.

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Yeah. I don’t hate the guy or anything like that. He comes of as a really nice guy. To a fault, if anything (not wanting to upset anyone).

That said, I genuinely feel like these guys are doing a disservice to everyone who plays Toss. You can be the biggest noob ever yet know “the void ray isn’t viable against Terran” or the tempest is the worst unit in any game.

If the Toss pro gamers wouldn’t be so content and would talk about the things that any Silver player knows is wrong with the race… you know… the race probably would be faring a lot better in the pros the past few years.

You can’t go from a catatonic state about design/balance to chiming in about P vs P. To make matters worse, your favorite style is the antithesis of RTS? Just make 2 units and turn your brain off. It makes Toss look so dumb. And this comes, what, a day after losing a game, in a tournament, due to upgrading air weapons instead of warp gate?

We’re not talking about some kind of beacon of perfect play here. I think ex warcraft players, in large, have been horrible for SC. They want Starcraft to become the new Warcraft. They simply don’t care about strategic depth at all. They think any game won through macro was a cheap win.

They help ruin the game for people who actually, you know, liked Starcraft… and would rather not see the S taken away from “RTS.” I wish they would have 2 circuits. A SC 2 that is like BW in regards to strategy and then just have a micro tournament for the warcraft players that involves zero strategy or macro.

That way, both groups can be happy for a change.

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