Starcraft 2 Thoughts: Rethinking SC2 knowledge

Here is a link to a part of the Liquidpedia I look at frequently, http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Mining_Minerals, even though I have a note card/index card made out with the highlights.

I find it useful to approach problems, and perhaps more importantly data, from many different angles.  A new approach often leads to new insights.

Looks like HwangSin has found a new insight to PvP play, based on my observations of the practice ladder games he was streaming last night, I certainly learned a few things from his Gosu game play.

The most impressive to me was HwanSin's very strong 3 Gate build for PvP that totally demolishes 4 gate play!

I didn't realize he was doing something different at first, so I didn't notice the exact timings, and perhaps this is more widely known than I realize, but he was making only stalkers with 3 Gates and 2 gas, but he only had 4 Probes mining gas!  Three Probes in one gas and one Probe in the 2nd gas, I plan to test and see if 2 Probes in each gas might mine a little faster, this seems to allow him to outproduce a 4 Gate build for Stalker production.

So all he has to do, in his own words as best I remember, is just move the Stalkers, not even Micro (by his Standards) them.  It seemed to me similar to Marines kiting Zealots, more or less a stutter step.  This keeps the Zealots from the enemies 4 Gate from being a significant factor, since they will never do more than shield damage to HwangSin's Stalkers.

I have never before seen either Protoss or Terran, do something like this with Gas, that I can remember, Zerg have some builds that use this concept or way of thinking.  Like 3 drones on gas to get speed then pulling them all or leaving just one Drone mining gas.

I will have to do some deep thinking on this, but it seems to me that Terrans that do Marine focused builds should really look into this general idea or concept of not just saturating the gas at every base.  They tend to get a large Bank of gas that they don't use, if they tweaked how much gas they mined, they would have more SCV's mining minerals, which would give them more Marines to fight and trade (ie Attrition Warfare or Attrit for short) armies.

So remember, just because something is Standard doesn't mean there isn't another way.  Hope that helps some Gamers think of new builds and concepts for Starcraft 2.

For those interested, I plan to do a future post on Attrition fighting vs Maneuver.

<33 HwangSin for streaming his Gosu play, I think any Protoss player can learn a lot from his stream!

GL HF,

~Cliff