Diamond players with superhuman skills

I like to practice with FFA as it is unranked and even as Bronze player I can stand my ground most of the times (although winning is very rare)

But for some reason Diamond players seem to be unbeatable even if their army is weakened. (and they always know exactly what your building even if you killed their scouts long time before they have seen you)

When my stronger army meets a gold player I win unless a make a dumb mistake, but against diamond it doesn't matter whose army is bigger or stronger I lose anyway.

a few examples.

ZvP: My massed Hydra's were roasted in a matter of second by Voids (Hydra's should be the counter to VR's but apparently not agains diamond)
TvT: more than 100 marines lv2/2 with stim and shield were killed by a 30/30 marine/marauder army (I did kill 60% of his group though)
PvP: My massed stalker/sentry were killed in Matter of seconds agains voids (again)


I still think FFA is a very good exercise without being punished

 

In most of the "voids killed my army" scenarios the odds are highly in favour of the rays either because of positioning or because of simply being worth more. Hydras are supposed to counter rays but if they're worth half as much as the fleet of VRs then there's nothing to discuss. For every 2 VRs you should have 5 hydras. And 5 hydras murder 2 rays no problem.

Because of the advanced path finding and the collision detection, armies tend not to look as formidable as their cost. For example air units stack like mad which can make then appear to be fewer in number. The ability to evaluate what an army is worth comes with practice.

 

Can you post some replays of that? I'd actually like to see that.

 

Upgrades.

Also, kuvasz, when you mass, there should be (theoretically) be points in your army mass that allow you to rape units (once focus fired). If you get successfully mass and micro (Doesnt take much tho) your hydra army to one-shot VRs (split into groups) then it will be slaughter.

If the diamond player masses VRs, he should be able to micro well enough to position VR beams so that all surviving VRs become fully charged.

 

It sounds like your problem is positioning and/or micro.

Void rays have enough life/shields to micro out the focused void rays.

In the marines vs marauder/marine, you probably were in a position where neither of you had all of your units in range. Even if you both had the same amount of units in range (for example 30) then the battle starts with 15marauders/15marines vs 30 marines. This is a huge disadvantage and if the battle continued you would lose if you continued to move 30 units into attacking range as your units die (and he did the same).

Keep in mind that marauders are much stronger than marines. Marines have 35 (or 45 if u researched combat shield) life after stimpack. Marauders have 135 after stimpack. This difference in life alone makes marauders almost 4x as good as marines.

 

Burrow/blink away from voids to reset their charges (hallucinations from sentries would have helped in that fight too).

As for the 30/30 rines and rauders, try to macro better counters. Something like 30 marines and 6 siege tanks would have been a better idea. Also, try to support infantry balls with medivacs to heal them up (especially when using stims).

In general, a medium-sized balanced force will beat out a mass force of 1 unit (with the possible exception of carriers lol)

 

Well my micro is ok against bronze and some silver players.
But against Platinum and Diamond its a no go., especially against diamond I'm completely outmicro'd without being able to hurt them much. (I guess that takes hundreds of hours of practice to reach that level)


But still, my goal in FFA is not to win but at least to be able to counter some attacks or do some damage. (and of course practice macro)
And this seems to be a good exercise without falling down on the ladder.

 

Here is an example of an invincible diamond player. (blue protoss team)
I'm red team (also protoss)

He wiped everything away with ease(Zerg and Terran players), even though he takes me on last and my army is almost at full.
His army is a littlle larger (his is 200 mine is 185) but still not even a scratch to his army.
He had weapon-3 shield-0 armor-3, I had weapon-2 shield-1 armor-3 (so he had a little more firepower and I had a little more hitpoints).

In my opinion stalkers should work ok against collossi , not the best counter but still capable.

There is one thing that worries me a little, my average APM is terrbly low and not improving over weeks.
His micro is of course better , maybe I expanded too late but still I expected a lot more damage to his army rather than just getting raped without even scratching him.

 

Collosi beats massed units. Even if it´s stalkers, their splash is crazy. They will hit about 4 stalkers, making them take 4 times 15 times 2 damage. Thats 120 damage, in a single sweep. While your stalkers then gives 14 times 4 damage in return, 56.

 

Ok, I watched your replay and have some general critique for you,

- (pro) You started off your build order fairly well, with a gateway and a cyber

- (con) After that you took way too long to build another gateway, you want to have a minimum of 2 early game, especially if you are planning on pumping out stalkers!

- (pro) You upgraded warp gates fairly early which was good, although with only 1 gateway it was not nearly as beneficial as it could have been

- (con) You took WAYYYY too long to expand, try not to hole yourself up in one base producing units until you mine your resources dry. The whole idea of expanding is to have extra income from multiple bases, rather than finishing one base's resources and moving on to the next

- (con) This ties into your low apm that you were talking about, I saw you move units out of your base to poke around and attack once in the entire game when you sent your dark templars. Try not to be so overly defensive, I guarantee you that if you sit in your base so long without doing anything against a diamond player, they will win every time.

If you leave diamond players unchallenged; they will expand more and have a higher income, they will macro better and have more units being produced, and they will micro their army better in an actual fight with you. I'm not trying to insult you, they have just had more practice and have a better understanding of the game. You stand a better chance by attacking earlier and catching them unprepared.

I would suggest that you try to practice earlier timed attacks rather than preparing for a 200 food fight at the very end of the game. To start off, see how fast you can get a nice stalker army up, ignoring upgrades on them. Take your army over to an enemy base and see what you can do, try not to just attack move, move your stalkers in close so that all of them are in range to attack and the back ones aren't sitting doing nothing.

As you improve your timing and get faster and faster at getting an army together, start incorporating upgrades (blink and attack most importantly). Once you can start getting a decent army with a few upgrades, try and produce a few different units that can help you.

Get some zealots to soak up damage in front of your stalker force while they attack, get some colossi to sit behind your stalkers and aoe if they are massing units, get some immortals if you are facing armies with lots of armored units (thors, siege tanks, ultralisks, roaches, marauders, stalkers) . Get an observer or phoenix to give you sight of an enemy's ledge so that you can blink your stalkers in.

When you are feeling more confident in your ability to control an army, try using some caster units. Get some sentries with your stalkers and start using their force field spells to keep melee units at range, and shield spells to help lower incoming damage.

Long story short, you are not going to improve your apm by sitting your forces in your base waiting to defend. Even if you lose your entire army attacking in the first couple of games...keep at it; you will start to get better at controling your army, you will start to get better at judging whether or not your army can successfully attack another army, you will start to learn what kind of units your army is weak against and hopefully try producing a few new units to help defend against them.

As for a good counter to stalker/colossi, try something like immortal/stalker, but attack earlier on before there are so many colossi up. Immortals will hit hard against both stalkers and colossi since they deal bonus to armored, and they should be able to tank incoming damage fairly well.

CryMoreNoobs #602
Feel free to hit me up for a 2v2 game some time if you want me to help you try these things.

 

From my experience against Protoss, isn't that like saying "you started off your build order fairly well by creating a probe with your first 50 minerals"?

 

Lol kind of...trying to throw the guy a bone here, don't ruin it.

 

They be trollin' they hatin'

 

Get out of here troll!
Go back under the bridge from whence you came!

 

YOU SHALL NOT PASS

But seriously, Kuvasz had a fair enough argument there. What matters the most is what you do after the standard opener, as long as you can execute the first few orders flawlessly.

 

In the hydras vs voids situation you have to keep in mind the unit stacking principles at work. Voids stack on each other (being air units and SC2 having no air collision) and hydras don't. Voids also aren't constrained by terrain limitations (choke points and the like).

You're going to want to try to engage the voids in as open a space as possible, and to surround/position your hydras to minimize the time they have to take traveling to the voids once the first shot as fired (i.e. minimize their "single file" approach).

Also, learn to love fungal growth. It helps setting up positioning, softening units, and you need it anyway to prevent mobile enemies from kiting (one of the zerg's worst problems). In fact, now that it prevents blink you could take on stalkers pretty efficiently just using hydras and a few infestors.