Author Archives: kevin

LotV Zerg v Terran by Stephano (featuring Vipers and Hydras)

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This morning, I tuned into Stephano streaming Legacy of the Void. Simply, I was blown away. I have watched various streamers over the past 2 weeks, and most of them are still working out through new units and strategies. Even if he hasn’t solidified his builds, Stephano played with the decisiveness in engagements and ease of micro that made him an instant success in Wings of Liberty, and it was a tremendous pleasure to watch. I watched him play 3 ZvT and 1 ZvZ games, so let’s dive into some analysis about what he did.

Stephano (Hydra/Viper) v. Semper (Mech with Banshees) – Link

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Apollo shows us HotS builds in LotV (and how to adjust build order timings)

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Most streamers are trying new, fancy things in LotV. Openings are adapting for the economy changes. New units are everywhere. Not Apollo. Apollo knows HotS builds, and he’s using HotS strategies. And they seem to work, more or less. It might not be the most innovative StarCraft play, but this is really helpful for us because it helps us compare timings from old HotS builds versus LotV builds.

We have some writeups from his past tutorials, though the most useful one is probably his Terran in HotS. Here’s an example build he used in TvT. It is a very standard Reaper Expand into Starport

Apollo’s HotS TvT

  • 1:00 10 Supply Depot
  • 1:37 12 Barracks (at ramp)
  • 1:50 12 Refinery (delay next SCV slightly)
  • 2:45 15 Orbital Command, Supply Depot (at ramp), Reaper (scout)
  • 3:40 18 Reactor (Marine x2 when ready)
  • 4:00 19 Command Center (in-base)
  • 4:12 20 Factory
  • 4:36 21 Marine x2
  • 24 Marine x2
  • 5:15 27 Starport, Hellion x2, Swap, Orbital Command

 

Compare this to a build he just used on stream against ForGG.

Apollo’s LotV TvT

  • 14 0:20 Supply Depot
  • 16 0:42 Barracks
  • 16 0:52 Refinery
  • 19 Reaper, Orbital Command (continuous Marines afterwards)
  • 20 Command Center (at natural)
  • 21 Supply Depot
  • 23 2:10 Factory
  • 23 Refinery
  • 30 2:56 Starport (delayed because of pathing, Medivac when it’s done), Tech Lab on Factory
  • 35 3:00 Bunker
  • 35 Cyclone (Tank next)
  • 4:26 Command Center, Barracks x2
  • 4:45 Tank drop starts
  • 5:30 Barracks x3

There are a few differences we have to account for between HotS and LotV builds:

1. Supply counts are about +4 from before. This begins with the Supply Depot going down at 14 instead of 10 and continues forward. This, of course, affects the minerals available, but most builds are timed out based on the tech tree, not minerals, so it works out

2. Times start about 40 seconds earlier. Because of the increase from 6 to 12 starting workers, builds start earlier. Use this as a delta on your builds.

3. The game clock is faster by a factor of ~1.4. Legacy of the Void has blessed us with a game clock that is the same as real-time, so your 15 minute game actually takes 15 minutes, not 11 minutes.

These changes lead to the build adjustment formula for HotS Terran builds to LotV Protoss builds, which I will coin as “Apollo’s First Law of Void”

LotV = (HotS – 40) / 1.4

By the way, Apollo crushed ForGG in that game. My rough analysis is that Cyclones are good in small numbers, but they aren’t a backbone to a Mech army, because mass Marines work pretty well.

Tune into Apollo’s stream if you get a chance. He’s a great player to learn from.

See Legacy of the Void build orders from replays

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Legacy of the Void (LotV) replays can now be parsed and viewed at http://lotv.spawningtool.com/! Big thanks are in order to Blizzard and Graylin for getting this issued so quickly. Just like LotV itself, the build is unstable and requires a lot of testing, but in principle, we can see what’s going on in the game.

In terms of our knowledge of the game, the biggest obstacle at the moment is that we actually haven’t really converged on any terminology or builds, so it’s a little tricky to know how to label the replays properly. That, however, is part of the excitement of the beta, and I’m looking forward to refining our taxonomy over time.

The biggest obstacle, however, is just sample size! If you have any LotV replays at all, please upload them or email them to us at spawningtool@gmail.com. We want to get as much into the system as possible. So far, the biggest dump just came out of the Lycan LotV Beta Tournament held earlier today. Big props to them for organizing something out of the gate and showing how exciting the game can be.

One more thing: if you see any interesting builds or strategies that you want us to do a writeup of, please let us know where you saw it, or better yet, send us a replay! We are looking to do some analyses of build orders and to really dig into this game.

Keep watching!

The First Night of LotV Beta

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Like many of you, I was anxiously watching Twitter all day to see when the Legacy of the Void (LotV) closed beta would start. Thankfully, I am on the west coast, so it did start at a reasonable time for me, and I dove into watching streams.

Just watching, I haven’t yet developed a great sense of the game, but frankly, that’s really exciting: I admit that I lost interest in Heart of the Swarm as the game settled into a relatively stable metagame. I know I’m diminishing a lot of the refine that happened over time, but I could come back months later and still feel like I knew what the builds and timings would be. LotV is totally new, and that’s really refreshing to learn and see new things.

I watched Pseudorandom, a masters level Zerg player. He played the LotV fan alpha mod, so he has a decent sense of the interactions and timings coming in, and it showed as he played quite a few ZvZs. Many players are trying out early Ravager pressure, and his response to that is to go Mutas: the timing seems tight, but the Corrosive Bile can be dodged, and none of those units can shoot up. I recommend you watch his stream to see how he plays it out.

Hopefully, http://lotv.spawningtool.com will be operational soon so that we can actually see some builds soon. Unfortunately, Blizzard has changed the replay format and haven’t yet released any details on what the changes are so that we can properly parse it. Even so, please upload your replays or let us know if any streamers are releasing replays so we can get them into the system. Once the parser is working, we can go back to analyze those replays, and I hope we get a good set in there when that’s ready.

Enjoy the game, and let me know if there are any particular games you would like a more in-depth analysis of!

lotv.spawningtool.com launched

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Quick note here: in anticipation for the Legacy of the Void (LotV) closed beta, we have spun up http://lotv.spawningtool.com. Particularly because of the economy changes, it didn’t make much sense to combine the LotV data with the Heart of the Swarm (HotS) data, so it is split away into a separate database. Because I’m lazy, this means that you will need to make new user accounts: hopefully that doesn’t bother you too much.

So if you happen to get into the LotV beta or otherwise get access to replays, please upload them! Note that early on, there are definitely going to be bugs in parsing the replays, but we will do our best to rectify those as quickly as possible. Even so, the only way that we will be able to figure those out is with lots of example replays to work with. And we can always re-parse the replays to get corrected data.

I hope you enjoy the launch of the beta!

Spawning Tool has rebuilt their blog and (hopefully) has a lot to reveal

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I believe I have successfully transitioned from http://starcraft.kevinleung.com to http://blog.spawningtool.com. All existing links should redirect to the new pages, so everything should still be accessible.

I also changed up the theme to be more consistent with the http://spawningtool.com color scheme. I can’t say I’m completely happy with it, but I hope it centralizes the branding.

One more thing: with the Legacy of the Void (LotV) beta coming within 2 weeks, Spawning Tool will need to go through some changes, and it would be helpful to have some people around to bounce ideas around with. Please contact me at spawningtool@gmail.com if you have any thoughts to share or at least would be willing to be a sounding board.

One more thing: I haven’t written much for this blog recently, but I might try to write more in the coming weeks. Fill out the poll if you have a moment so I can focus on writing the best content for you.

What content do you enjoy reading and would like to see more of?

  • Build orders and guides (63%, 5 Votes)
  • Spawning Tool site updates (13%, 1 Votes)
  • Graphs and statistics from Spawning Tool data (13%, 1 Votes)
  • Detailed analysis of professional games (13%, 1 Votes)
  • Critique of game of design (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Reporting lessons from my personal games (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 8

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Moving to blog.spawningtool.com

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In an effort to realign content, I will be moving this blog to http://blog.spawningtool.com. It isn’t up yet, but I figured I would post forewarning in case I am not able to make a smooth transition. I will post again afterwards.

Since I’m posting, here are a few tidbits.

First, I’m excited for the upcoming launch of the Legacy of the Void (LotV) beta! There aren’t too many surprises in the announcement, but I’m glad to see it coming so soon. There will probably need to be some changes to Spawning Tool to accommodate Legacy of the Void, but I haven’t really figured out the details there. Hopefully I can get into the beta early and play the game.

Second, speaking of playing, I played a game this morning, which is more noteworthy than it should be. The game was unremarkable, and I feel bad for my opponent. I went for a Reaper expand into a (not very good) 10 minute timing attack while they opened 3 Hatch before Pool. I saw 1 Overlord early, so I took a slightly different path to their base, and in the process, I think I might have (unintentionally) perfectly skirted around the vision of 3 Overlords. I think they were probably surprised.

Third, I think I’m going to play around with more Ghost builds. I saw this reddit post lamenting the diminishing importance of the Ghost, and I figured I should give it a shot. I don’t know any Ghost builds or how to even integrate Ghosts into a composition other than late game TvP, but I’ll report back on what I find, hopefully.

See you on the other side at http://blog.spawningtool.com!

Put myself in my opponent’s seat: beating the mirror matchup

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As Maxilicious from TerranCraft pointed out, I have been getting away from my roots in writing about Heroes so much recently. Good point. The posts about Heroes haven’t been brilliant: they’re just observations from playing regular games. I’m pretty sure it’s been months since I have last played a 1v1 ladder game, so I sat down and played a game. It went okay: I won a ZvZ.

http://spawningtool.com/19968/

It can be hard to read the build orders for exactly what happened in the game, but roughly, my opponent opened with a big Zergling push, then we both settled into Roach/Hydra. Eventually, I broke through with Swarm Hosts and better upgrades and won. Our macro was so-so. There weren’t really any cool micro plays. There were a few key decisions, however, that I want to touch on briefly.

First, I scouted no expansion and guys pulled out of gas. This was a pretty easy read for some sort of Speedling attack. I kept Overlords in a line and a few Zerglings sent around to scout to watch for the timing, and that came with plenty of time for me to get Roaches out to defend.

Second, I avoided the Zergling run-by by putting myself in my opponent’s seat. I knew that there were more Zerglings out on the map after I tried to expand and wasn’t fast enough to cancel the Hatchery. I figured I was ahead since I had my expansion for longer and had teched up to Roaches. I wanted to move out to push but realized that if I were him, I would go for a run-by as soon as I saw the army on the map. As such, I split my army leaving half of my Roaches uphill to defend while moving out with half. It was a good call as I crushed the run-by, got an expansion going, and went for a full attack soon.

Third, I got overconfident in an attack. I figured I was ahead and would probably overwhelm my opponent with a Roach/Hydra attack. I was wrong. Given that there wasn’t an immediate counter, I figured that it was probably close-ish, but I definitely lost my whole attacking army. Despite having slightly better upgrades, I probably wasn’t ahead in army supply, and my opponent had faster reinforcements. I should have been more careful and just leveraged my positioning into getting further ahead.

Fourth, I transitioned into Swarm Hosts and static defenses. There were more run-bys and good army movement by my opponent to pick off bases, but most of the fight was in a straight line. I knew it was a stalemate otherwise, so I went for (what seemed to me to be) an early Hive for +3/+3 and started building Swarm Hosts. My control was poor with Swarm Hosts running out to rally points and dying unburrowed, but I did get enough to slowly push in.

I think that point 2 was probably my proudest moment. I play random, so I do roughly see all matchups, and I don’t feel good about any of them. That perspective, however, is probably something I should leverage more: I should use strategies I hate against other players myself. Conversely, I should anticipate what I would do either to press my advantage or to come back in a game, and prepare against that. This might be harder for non-random players, but at least it’s something to apply in mirror matchups to break the stalemates.

And one more thing: Fantasy Proleague signups are open. I haven’t paid much attention to the last few seasons, but I made a team anyways!

Heroes Day 3: does mana even matter?

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Just before playing my games of Heroes today, I played a game of Dota 2. I figured that I would be done with Dota after quitting AHGL, but we still talk about it at the office, and I had a hankering. We lost, but it was fun. It was surprisingly easy to switch back into it.

After that, I played 2 quick match games of Heroes, both with Tyrande. Just like in Dota, I like to play supports. Unlike Dota, I don’t seem to die very much. In the first game that we lost, I think I died maybe 3 times and started the game with a killing streak. In the second, game, I didn’t die at all. I think the targets in the game must be different. I’m used to (and totally fine with) being bursted down or throwing my body in the way to let one of our carries survive. I guess that happens less in Heroes since all team experience is shared and there are no prime targets. Strange.

It took me a game to figure out Tyrande. In the first game, I forgot to cast my owl out of combat, I forgot to cast my target in combat, and I was reluctant to use my Starfall. Most of those got sorted out in the second game as I was better able to use my owl to finish kills during chases. The learning curve for individual heroes seems shorter than the period for leveling them up, which is nice. I think the next thing for my Tyrande play would be doing a better job with global Starfall and using the Owl to impact the map as a whole and provide better vision even when I’m not physically in the area.

Another odd thing in the game is that mana doesn’t seem to really matter. This is not to say that I don’t get low: I really think I do a good job casting abilities off cooldown. It just seems like there’s way more mana lying around in wells and regeneration globes than I actually need, so I can cast everything on cooldown. It’s more fun to cast abilities than not (see Dota), but it also means that I never take the talents to save mana.

One thing I need to figure out is the different stages of the game. So far, the gameplay has stayed roughly the same early, middle, and late. Push down towers. Push more towers. Take camps and map objectives when you have space. I guess the boss camps aren’t really doable early. Teamfighting seems less important early than just covering lanes, but not really. I think that the emphasis on action from the beginning of the game (removing the laning phase) makes the game go much faster, but it did take away an obvious distinction for me.

Anyways, the game continues to be fun. I like to say that the differences between MOBA games are overstated and that they’re all really the same game, but I can see how Heroes and the 2nd generation of MOBAs is really trying to get away from the original DotA formula from WarCraft 3. I’ll try to put more thought into that in future posts.

Heroes Day 2: Practicing with more heroes

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On my first day of Heroes, I only played 2 heroes: Raynor for the tutorials and Li Li for my 3 Quick Match games. Today, I played 4 more practice matches with Uther, E.T.C., Sonya, and Illidan. All of them seemed fine. I don’t know if people have preferences between the roles or heroes, but if they do, I figure I’ll just play the least popular one, because they all seem to require the same general level of engagement, just in different ways (healing, chasing, etc)

My main observation is that the Practice mode is pretty terrible. Maybe I missed the part where I could set the difficulty, but it was pretty easy to wail on the heroes in lane to force them out and then start accruing an experience advantage. It sounds like co-op mode is better adjusted for difficulty, but I think that they are both skippable modes.

I played Sky Temple and Blackheart’s Bay and today, I played Garden of Terror and Haunted Mines for the first time. Again, I’m pretty new to the game, but it seemed like all of the modes were quite similar despite being presented as a differentiating aspect to the game: there are objectives to collect around the map, and they feed into being able to push harder. I do like the focus on map objectives: camps, towers, and map objectives all seem to be big priorities, which cuts out the work of farming.

Of course, playing practice games didn’t seem to enlighten me much on strategy. Naively, it seems like the basic flow of the game is to look for a kill, then try to take camps or other map objectives while the other team can’t team fight. These objectives then allow you to push down towers more quickly. I haven’t tested this theory yet, and I don’t understand the subtleties past that.

I get the 4 different roles on the team at a high level. Past that, I don’t really understand team composition yet, though it seems very important. Given how Quick Match works, however, that aspect seems to be downplayed.

I’m looking forward to playing a bit more against real people to see what else is going on in play against people.