Mortal Kombat 9

So I haven't been playing much Starcraft II lately. I've been playing Mortal Kombat 9 on xbox for the past few days. I actually like this game quite a bit minus the fact that online play is still kind of laggy compared to offline.

I'm really good with Raiden I've figured out, and I'm okay with Scorpion and Sindel. I'm currently on a 29 ranked game win streak with my overall stats being something like 60-11. People online are really bad. I can do this massive 15 hit combo with Raiden in the corner and every single time I've pulled it off the other player left once I was finished. I lol everytime.

To add insult to injury I also do Babalities to 90% of the people I play. (You can't block the final round in order to perform one.)

If anyone feels like hitting me up for a game add my XBL account. enruler

LOL POOR, Thoughts on specific units, & PTR Balance changes

So yeah lost my internet for a while there due to not paying the bill. Money's been fairly tight especially since I'm taking CompTIA A+/N+ courses. I feel like I'm trying to squeeze blood from a stone at this point. I'm even behind on rent money.


Anyway I seen an interesting thread on Teamliquid. A user had made a discussion thread talking about these following abilities:

Concussive Shell
Forcefield
Fungal Growth

Now the reason why they were mentioned was because they can potentially remove the "micro" aspect of battles, which was unanimously agreed upon; Is bad.

Concussive Shells devastate units like stalkers. Once a marauders out it shuts down early stalker pressure. Because if you get clipped by one that unit is pretty much dead. It's quite annoying. Zealots and roaches are also completely destroyed by this ability. Zerglings are only spared because of the high volume you can produce it overwhelms the marauder(s).

Forcefield allows a player to completely encircle, cut off, or cut in half a whole army. This is clearly overpowered since there's no real counter to it other than massive units. Once again this cuts down the micro aspects of early game and even middle game at times. A separate issue I have with this ability is the fact that Protoss NEEDS it to survive early game pressure from Z and T. I don't think a race should be completely dependable on an ability like this just to survive.

Fungal Growth isn't as bad as the other two I'd say since it's fairly high up the tech tree and harder to acquire and use. However it still has that problem of completely mobilizing an army removing micro. I just wish plague would have been in the game instead.

I'm not sure what Blizzard is so content with those abilities. Starcraft 2 is very heavily macro orientated. I miss the micro days of Broodwar.

PTR Balance Changelog...

Balance

* PROTOSS

o Archons are now a massive unit.

o Pylon power radius has been decreased from 7.5 to 6.5.

o Cybernetics Core
+ Research Warp Gate time increased from 140 to 180.

o Gateway
+ Sentry train time decreased from 42 to 37.
+ Stalker train time decreased from 42 to 37.
+ Zealot train time decreased from 38 to 33.
+ Warp Gate unit train times remain unchanged.


* TERRAN

o Ghost
+ Cost changed from 150/150 to 200/100.

o Bunker
+ Salvage resource return reduced from 100% to 75%.


* ZERG

o Spore Crawler
+ Root time decreased from 12 to 6.




I actually like most of these changes. However everyone will have to be more weary of proxy gateways now. They really plagued the game during launch due to the fast production time of zealots. So we'll see how this goes. I think it's a step in the right direction though given how powerful 4 gating is.

Anyway I'm out of things to say at the moment.

I Hate Computers

Haven't been playing much SC as of late. My power supply decided it was a good time to die out. So I had to wait to replace it, get it replaced now my graphics card refuses to work. I'm not sure if my bad PSU fried it somehow in the process or not. Unfortunately it didn't fit properly in my case so I had to Jerry-rig it in there. I think that's what the actual problem is and just putting in the new pins just jarred it loose, and I can't get it back in properly again.


I was using this...

Now I've had to downgrade to this.

It's still a decent card but not as good as my previous. Oh well I'm glad I kept my old card handy just in case something like this happened.

I'm not too sure how to test if the card if it's done, without having another mobo/Whole PC set up. So I'll have to just keep it in storage until now. Oh well what can you do?

ANYWAY OFF TO PLAY SC!

Puppies & Cake

You know whats better than Starcraft II?

GERMAN SHEPHERD PUPPIES!!

No other puppies can compare either. I pretty much dislike all dogs other than German shepherds or white shepherd dogs.

Although not better than Starcraft II, cake is also good.

Especially chocolate cake.

In regards to Starcraft II I'm currently on an 11 game win streak for 1v1 ladder.

(I totally made this blog for you Chelsea.)

New Thoughts On Ladder... (Frustations)

So after playing about 60 games in the past 2 weeks I must say ladder play is a lot different now. People seem to play a lot better than they used to. (Granted I am playing poorly, out of practice, and just generally being bad haha.) Specific build orders are now being used. Back when the game first launched people were just figuring their own things out, it was pretty fun.

Virtually every game against Protoss you're defending a 4 gate push. No matter what race you are. Or else they just sit in their base after taking their natural expansion, and just play defense until they get out a huge deathball of colossi. Protoss seems to be the most 1 dimensional of the 3 races now. It's all about defending until you reach the top of your tech tree. Then you move out and win. You think this would be easy to beat in that case but it just isn't. I have it happen to me all the time and I do it to other players all the time.

Terran is still pretty versatile, which I like playing against to be honest. You never know what to expect and they generally don't sit in their base and do virtually nothing all game until the very end. They have a lot of harassment options which is also nice. So overall I'd say they really feel the most balanced of the 3 races now. I still have a few gripes with them though.

Now with the "weak" race Zerg! I personally find Zerg extremely under powered. I even think I have proof to help back this claim up. Just look at how much Zerg is used compared to Terran and Protoss...

http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/region/all/all/all

Zerg is just really lacking something. Forcefield is far too powerful against them for starters. Zerg lacks a good answer for the Protoss deathball. Colossi just completely decimate ground, so does storm. Mutas are only effective for a short time, and sometimes rendered completely useless if your opponent places static defense in good positions. I'm just having a really hard time finding a way to win with them. It would appear almost everyone does though.


I feel this game needs an overhaul still. There always seems to be some big balancing issues. Right now Zerg is just in desperate need of a helping hand. Then again I think they always did other than during beta. Protoss is just far too strong. Terran seems pretty balanced, other than the fact reapers now seem completely useless.

I'm also getting extremely tired of every Protoss player 4 gating every single game.

Starcraft II Ladder Reset Today!

I'm somewhat excited for this. My division was pretty inflated with high point users. There was just no way I was going to catch up. Now I got a fair shot again.

So far so good too, I've won my first 3 games. But required a break afterwards.

Grandmaster is also introduced now. I'm only in Diamond right now though. I highly doubt I could ever make it in the top 200. But I may damn well try.

Bronze League Fun

Due to my raging boredom of Starcraft II again I've been messing around a lot. I decided to throw all my 2v2 solo placement matches as well as lose 10 consecutive games on purpose. Once I was done I decided to play semi-normally, or just do stupid shit.

Memorable games...

1. One game I decided to do nothing but fast expand and make all ghosts. These guys as well as my teammate were all just so horrible. I ended up getting 24 ghosts, and had 3-0 upgrades quite quickly. I cloaked and was able to stroll freely into the opponents bases because they lacked detection. I found one of them massing voidrays. It was funny as hell because I 1 shotted all of them with my ghost army. He didn't even run them away. They just all died. After wiping out all his pylons I moved onto the next noob and found he went zealots and stalkers. Once again lacked total detection. After about 1 minute of raping all their pylons and their armies they just left.

2. Another game I decided to do nothing except mass thors. I wasn't sure how this would work out since the other team was TP and my partner was Z. By time they attacked I already had 15+ thors out with 2-2 upgrades. To make matters worse once again the toss decided it was a good idea to mass voidrays. I literally took out his whole voidray fleet in about 1 second. The terran had tanks/marines/hellions which were all systematically wiped out by me and my partners mutalisk army...

3. A SERIOUS GAME! My partner dropped almost immediately at the start. I started controlling both of our bases. This time I was Z and he was P. Against a PP team. I figured this would be challenging since it was essentially 1v2 except I'd have more income. It actually wasn't that bad. I was able to form an army quite quickly. I went roaches/stalkers/sentries. I was pretty surprised at quickly I could raise an army. They attempted to cheese me with massive amounts of zealots and a couple stalkers. I easily beat it and countered with a winning push. Before they left the guys like "WOW YOUR MACRO MUST BE INSANE!!!". I laughed...


Well after only about 15 wins or so I got promoted to silver, and gold was even quicker. I've decided to just play normally and get my solo 2v2 up to diamond or master. Even gold players are still quite bad though and I can play extremely half-assed.

Anyway overall it was pretty funny I'd recommend people do this if they want to have some laughs and just generally play like crap. The games feel very relaxed. It must be what all casual gamers feel. Generally games I play are tense and rage inducing over a multitude of reasons.