Starcraft Diaries: Heart of the Swarm

Oh my lord, what is happening right now?  Am I actually writing something?  Has the sky fallen and all the land descended into the desperate chaos of anarchy?  It could be posited that I really like hyperbole.  But yes, words are happening because HoTS happened and I enjoy being completely late to the party.  Just kidding, I’ve had it since opening week but have been busy and haven’t been playing much until this last week. 

One thing about HoTS I was excited about is the fact that Blizzard rearranged the league percentages so that it’s easier to get out of Bronze.  You might think that would make getting into Silver less special, but that is completely not the case.  I actually got frustrated and stopped playing for a month or so because the last season of WoL I racked up a shit-ton of wins, my win/loss ratio was crazy good, and I was regularly beating silver players.  But day after day, no promotion.  It was ridiculous.  Bronze league was like a black hole that was impossible to get out of.  But no longer, the very first HoTS season I was placed in Silver and it did not lessen my sense of accomplishment, I felt like I belonged there.  I was losing a lot, but I was winning too.  But then something weird happened: I got a job.  Shocking.  So I didn't have as much time to play and before I knew it the time had come for another placement match and I got placed back in Bronze.  But before I could get bitter and disappointed I played a PvP match against someone who was doing their placement match.  Long story short, they went one-base ring-o-cannons with no scouting.  So I thought “Ok, this is a Bronze person” and built a big enough army to melt the cannons and stomp all over his base.  Oh, and I built said army in his natural expansion with an expansion of my own right next door.  I wasn't joking about the lack of scouting.  But then I saw on the screen that the owner of the account had at one time finished a season in Diamond and I felt like the water heater in that one Mythbusters episode that explodes through the roof of a house.  I’m pretty sure that whoever owned the account originally stopped playing and let his little brother or something take over, because I don’t want to live in a world where one can get into Diamond with a one-base no-scout CANNONS FOREVER tactic.  The dubious benefit of all this is that I went from Bronze to top 8 Silver in one match.

I think perhaps the ladder system is still evening itself out.

I say dubious benefit because there is no way in hell I should be top 8 Silver.  I’d rate myself as probably top 100, possibly higher if I’m really in the zone.  So the last couple days I have been losing like crazy.  Which is fine, and I’m sure I’ll drop quite a few ranks before the end of the season but damn if that little star on my league medal isn't an impetus to play more and improve.

I haven’t finished the campaign yet so I can’t comment on that completely, but I do like the way Starcraft 2 campaigns introduce you to the race in question over the course of the missions, adding more and more units as the story goes along.  By the end of WoL I could play Terran passably well, but I switched to Protoss because they are shiny.  You may think I’m joking, but I really am that superficial.  I stuck with it because I like the warp-in mechanic and I just could not get my head around Zerg.  As we all know, humans are boring.

So, new units.  I've mostly been concentrating on the Mothership Core (I can’t make myself call it a Mama core for some reason).  It’s a really cool little unit and it’s saved my bacon quite a few times, but I’m still not that great at using it to its full extent.  I've dabbled with the Tempest and Oracle but I think I’m going to try and integrate one unit at a time into my vocabulary.

In case this was entertaining to anyone else but me, I will also mention something I learned today in the only match I won before work.  First, I love fast Zealots.  A corollary to that is that Speedlot/Phoenix is hilarious and COMPLETELY FAIR.  Especially when facing a Terran who’s going heavy on the Marauders, scouts your Phoenixes too late, and only builds a few Vikings.  Swarming Zealots + Lifting Phoenixes = RAGE QUIT.  I don’t know about most people, but I get a perverse sense of enjoyment when someone quits without a ‘gg’.  That person on the other end of the screen is not calmly pondering how they could have done better, they are pounding their fists on the keyboard in a rage and screaming about how Phoenixes are imbalanced.  That makes me incredibly happy.