P.S. there are also some things missing and I'll make part 2 OP Swarm Hosts story - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8HuZMZZ40XY.html IMBA Brood-Lord infetsors story - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KbtDFgEO7pM.html Timecodes: 00:00 The topic of the video is 00:17 Strategy №1 03:13 Strategy №2 06:38 Strategy №3 08:22 Strategy №4 10:23 Strategy №5
Cannon rush is so canon, it goes back even to the sc1 days. I'd go ahead and say dying to a cannon rush is a rite of passage for all starcraft players.
Man, the good ol' days of cannon rushes in SC1. As a life-long protoss player, it makes me proud that our cheesiest and most infamous strategy and "unit" to this day retains its' legendary and relevancy status
Isn't rite of passage when you defend against it for the first time? Nothing beats feeling of stoping brutaly ez, noob proof toss cheese. Pylon was so huge back in the wings.
My personal PTSD-inducing experience was starting to play during blink--allin meta. With the HotS tanks and economy, it was incredibly difficult on lower leagues to survive even to stable 2-base eco.
Tankivacs were one of the wildest things I've ever witnessed in SC2; Byun's micro in particular with this combo was just something else. I think we all knew the good old cannon rush was going to be #1 though. It's pretty hilarious how much the cheese has evolved to continue getting wins.
Byun is personally responsible for getting 2 units nerfed lol. It's kinda silly that something can get nerfed because one single player on the entire planet is REALLY good at using them with stupidly good micro.
@@BurgMusic welcome to the wonderful world of “pro league” balancing where 1 player can get an entire unit nerfed TWICE. I’m a Zerg player btw but agree balancing a game because of 1 person compared to millions is silly.
disagree. balancing for esports should be done based around what the very best can do with them. maybe it'd be OK to have a pro mode and a casual mode with different balancing? but basically if the game is going to have a competitive mode you HAVE to balance for the top 0.01% @@cosmonauthal7651
Remember when Reapers had that anti building grenade Or mass old void rays charging up on rocks, a building or their own pylon to become unkillable Or mass Ravens dropping 30 auto turrets and sending 50 bombs into your army with 20 PDDs to shut down your army for like 10 seconds
@@anvietanh6723 Z still has really shitty and no early anti-air. But cannonrush into Immortal blink I hate more than all that air. The fk is wrong with Blizzard giving Protoss blink for every ground unit?
I've been playing since early WOL and i swear to god, i had literal nightmares of mass muta and lings attacking my bases. No other strategies were nightmare inducing
Just posted a comment about it... It's true, Mutalisks & the suggested changes into HoTS got me away from SCII. I only watch it here & there - usually GSL. Am in fact more interested in ASL and SCI games to be honest. Have unfortunately never regained much love for SCII after their odd (test/experiment focussed) years between 2013 - 2018/2019.
@@Lanzetsu I agree. Balance complaints will continue forever and might even be a good sign in that people are still playing and still care about winning, but from all that I've watched it's never been more interesting than it is now in all match ups.
you must've been stuck in low diamond, because tankivacs were unbeatable in tvz all the way to master. it was absolute hell to climb out of diamond from personal experience
Cannon Rush, is one of the most annoyng cheeses that exist. In fact, is there no kind of "cannon rush/tower rush" cheese on a game, the game is not a true RTS xD
1 base non stop nydus swarmhost spam is pretty annoying. But i agree cannon rushing is pretty annoting. Much easier to do than defend. They could have solved it if it required a nexus in the near field to be built.
Swarm Host, pop out almost anywhere and as soon as they've arrived they drop their eggs and escape. The opponent takes unavoidable damage and the whole thing repeats.
@@keamu8580 I really hate how cheap and unstoppable Nydus has become. In BW it was simply a defensive tool, in SC2 everything has turned into offensive or some kind of harassment tool. Even spellcasters and capital ships, all designed by David Kim to make worker harassment create the only cool moments in SC2... Locust in my opinion should require an upgrade to be able to fly. And Nydus 4 armor would be enough, as well as 75/75 cost.
As for cannonrush, I mean it is annoying, but at least there's more counterplay. Still I wouldn't mind nerfing it. A bit slower buildtime, and shield batteries could be even more expensive (I'm a Protoss main btw). Everytime you attack a Protoss, he spams shield batteries. Not even cannons. The worst is Prism pickup range though, that range could also be halved, barred behind an upgrade or removed altogether. The fk does Protoss need to have blink for every ground unit? But I don't want to just nerf certain races. Nerf them all, barr medivac speedboost behind an upgrade, too.
Cmon, planetary rush is a troll build. You just gotta stop the planetary from landing or just attack it with workers. There are cheeses which have no easy way of being countered and scouting them doesn't help much like cannons into robo with immortals and batteries
@@januszkurahenowski2860 In some maps it is not that easy when you are being pushed and sometimes it is used as a push itself on your Natural while advancing with units. UThermal I think was trolling with it. Also low level players won't know how to deal with it usually.
I remember when there was short meta when after another round of nerfs top lvl zergs came to infested terrans. like your whole army was infestors and with rapid fire you just spawned like 50 infested marines, and meanwhile your opponent deals with them, you just spam another 50 on another bases
Notable other things, mostly from early SC2 days (maybe even beta). Could build rax before supply depot, can wall ramp with just a depot and a barracks, this lead to VERY aggressive terran openers.
Oh man, I remember PvP being just a horrible matchup to watch when 4gate was at its peak. Building an expo was almost a death sentence in PvP at the time. It made the matchup so boring and predictable
True, although it was cool that players couldn't expand without scouting. Nowadays everyone builds their 1st and 2nd expansion with like one unit, it's safe enough and on 3-base you can max out in under 10 minutes. In my opinion this is just as dumb, but it's normal.
@@razorback9999able That's the problem. There's only one optimal and thus viable strategy and that makes it boring. I'm watching a lot of SC1 lately, it's so much more exciting. Although buildorders are mostly the same, the strategy on the map isn't. In SC2 it's only poking and retreating, trying to deal damage without receiving it. SC1 is more about conquering the map, cutting off the enemy, etc.. That's why SC2 is boring and not more popular.
The difference between a good strategy and a game breaking cheese, is the amount of counterplay options you have. If there is only 1-2, this can ruin the game. Because it all becomes about that one strategy or skill.
Countering mass muta was relatively easy in HOTS since the Mothership core could essentially turn your Nexus into the ultimate turret. I remember doing that as a counter 1 or 2 times.
For me as Terran proxy 2x robo and void Ray with shield batteries is the most annoying strat there is, scouting it doesn't even do much. If you don't scout it you die, if you scout it it's still really hard. With Terran if your proxy gets found they just kill the scv and defending it is pretty straightforward, as it should be. Protoss will just warp in additional pylons or even make a shield battery, a single reaper or marine won't stop the buildings from warping in. I'm glad that the 2 robo immortal warp prism isn't played by pros which makes it also not popular on ladder since i can't find anything that reliably kills immortal with a warp prism at that point in the game
Wonder if there is anything. I hate that strategy as well, and as a Protoss player myself I have no idea what the fk Blizzard was thinking giving every Protoss ground unit blink.
I 4gated my way to Gold in WoL, then included 3gate robo for PvP to get to Plat lol. Only after that did I actually start doing macro builds. I regret nothing.
While not OP, rushes involving cloak (DT, Banshee) are pretty anyoing, especially during WoL. Bashees were particularly mean in TvT, because if you try to just blind-counter them by building turrets, you would often fall behind because of the investment. But scanning to scout whether they build cloacked banshees also looses resources.
As someone who played during WoL as a very low ladder Protoss player, I loved to try very hard to get a DT rush off and have my buildings for it not get scouted. Often the games turned into long slugfests, because I would force them into teching into anti DT stuff, and would end up going either into Archons or like mass Zealots and Stalkers, with the occasional DT drops from Warp Prisms.
Something missed from the cannon rush section is that there was an early time when those destructible rocks weren't there at the bottom of the main initially. This allowed protoss to wall in their opponents with ease, greatly increasing the effectiveness of the rush.
I remember the days of the droperlords at T1, this definetly felt like something was way off. Protoss relies on early wall offs to deal with mass amounts of zerglings from the zerg players, that not being the case would mean that protoss units are just dying to lings, and this is what happened... It was such a horrible design
If you watch uThermal, you can see that even with the nerf the dropperlords are still stupidly deadly. That said, in my opinion it would be cool if the game wouldn't revolve about expanding like crazy (and then only attacking opponents workers). People take their 3rd with like 1-2 units. I find this equally dumb to 1-base cheeses.
Mutalisks will always be the more annoying cheese, because it's both cheesy to get them quickly, mass them & people think it's just a normal part of the game. The only other 2 units you used to be able to mass essentially alone and win with are zerglings (early enough) usually & roaches (roaches used to be more of that mass & win unit, but less so now though)... marines at least need medivacs.
7:12 AMAZING! As you were describing the strategy, the first (painful) thought that came to my mind was how sOs (my favorite player of all time) got abused by Scarlett when she used it against him in that final many moons ago.
Scarlett isn't a "she". He's a man pretending to be a woman and you're so PC indoctrinated you're willing to disregard basic biology and science (no science actually supports this gender spectrum garbage) to make yourself feel like a good person for "accepting people for who they really are". I know for a fact you don't actually agree with it. Presented with the opportunity, you wouldn't have sex with Scarlett but actual female gamers you wouldn't hesitate. Livibee, Queene, Albatross, etc. You're a fraud and everyone knows it, but again, you're willing to go against basic biology and common sense to make yourself feel and look like a good person. The fact that you're OK with mutilating little kids to keep this charade up is disgusting.
No 4 racks reaper allin during Super early WoL in ZvT? Triple immortal sentry allins midway thru WoL was a lot more common and well known and would probably be my pick.
Tankivacs were one of the most broken things I've personally seen/played against. Especially some of those maps back then had high ground right next to the natural that was the easiest place to siege.
The most stupid thing ever was siege tanks to be able to drop. Now seriously, the most hated and imbalance thing was the ms core overcharge and my personal super top place, swarm hosts as they used to be around 2014-2015. Super broken unit that you could abuse the shit out of it in every match and in every situation. Sh were so imbalance it was scarry and they were left like that for maybe 2-3 years before blizz finally addressed them and fixed them for good.
My strategy was simple. I analyzed a bunch of team maps and found the paths units usually travel along. In game, I'd mass widow mines afap and burrow them along those paths. Even if the enemy discovered the, they'd eventually run into more. It was a solid strategy for team games.
It really is weird why they couldn't just make the tank go back into tank mode instead of leaving it in siege mode. Just being able to save tanks is already worth a lot, especially with blinding cloud, biles, disruptors, etc.
@@Appletank8the whole point of seige units is for it to be risky to put them in a position where they can be targeted...it would be like if tempests had a short-range blink to dodge viking shots
Ah, the good old canon rush. I mainly played Zerg and I remember when I lost a few games against canon rush I switched to Protoss for a while and I played canon rush every time I met Zerg. Felt good. Won every time. It was so easy to execute, yet so hard to defend.
Cannon rushing PvZ in HoTS was a legitimate way to keep Zerg honest. They had to scout and couldnt just put down 3 hatch before pool blindly. The introduction of the shield battery substantially later in LoTV changed the strategy. There were immortal prism pushes after cannon rush before this but especially in PvP the proxy void ray batter push after cannon rushing became too powerful. Funny thing is vs Protoss and Terran you didnt even need to cannon rush before proxy VR. All in all I still condone cannon rush vs Zerg as means of early game aggression but I think its best to leave it at that.
Controversial opinion incoming: I'm a Terran and I believe Siege tank is the most boring and cancer unit in StarCraft 2 and it should be removed from the game. Think about it. StarCraft 2 is fun and exciting to play and entertaining and enjoyable to watch because it is fast paced. And what is the number one enemy of fast pace? Turtling. That is not solved with Tankivacs but at least it gave the option for the Terran to be mobile. I really enjoyed that Meta and although I was too terrible to be able to pull it off, at least it was fun to watch. And then Blizzard decided to buff the tank and remove the drop micro which made the game even more stagnant. StarCraft is at its peak when it enables fast paced skilled plays, which means siege tanks and mines should (luck bass RNG) should be removed or reworked into better units that better promote the spirit of StarCraft. I know tanks are an iconic unit in the StarCraft universe and I'm not saying to remove the unit entirely but I think siege mode needs to be removed or reworked to promote action rather than passive gameplay.
Marine drops were extremely annoying to me. Losing even 1 muta to a widow mine also felt horrible. But I stopped playing that year so it's not a big trauma.
So I offered two different solutions to nerf the Shield Battery. 1. Remove the Shield Battery entirely. Remove Battery Overcharge for the Nexus as well. Since Protoss now doesn't have early game defense, I don't know a good replacement/alternative for shield batteries aside from Mothership Cores. 2. Remove the ability to shield-heal structures. This does not eliminate cannon rush entirely, but makes counterplay more viable while restricting the Battery to it's intended role.
@Adarviroh Fan Belarus So option #2 then. Just nerf the Shield Battery so that it no longer heals structures anymore. Also, your comment is invincible to everyone because RU-vid filters are broken.
@Adarviroh Fan Belarus The Warp Prism's pickup range is to blame for this. Blizzard removed Tankivacs but not this one? Even Zerglings, units meant to counter Immortals, are having a hard time thanks to Warp Prism's pickup range.
The droplords with the evo chamber was THE BEST that had happened to sc2, a game based on fucking ramps and chokes. It was the best way to make people play different, scout instead of applying the standardt template for this map. God, I wish there were island and open maps like in BW.
its very werid because cannon rushes in early sc2 were actually some of the most broken things in the game, its just the skill level wasnt there to take full advantage of it, on top of ramp blocking, there were some maps where just 1 pylon+1 canon would be tucked away behind the mineral line and be basically unkillable denying an expansion. + in sc2 we had to learn about pylon hopping etc etc. but i believe if u take todays players and put them in WOL meta, cannons would dominate in competitive for many map pools
cannon rush was quite literally played within the first 10 games played on battlenet on starcraft 1 (first game with protoss in it)...didn't really work since their opponent was zergling rushing. 4-pool vs some poor sap that didn't 4-pool was the very first game: sc1 zerglings and zealots were utterly terrifying in SC1 so in any map where the opponent had a known starting location zerg and 'toss players could literally just build their basic unit and A-moove and win literally 100% of the time that their opponent did not do the same, it's why all the 1v1 games you can find in sc1 are on 4-player maps or maps with MASSIVE rush distances created by windy pathways, usually both.
You're a leftist. You've been losing your entire life because leftist policies suck. No matter where and when they've been tried, they always result in an increase in crime and lower quality of living.
oh you said cannon rush is the only strat you can use in all matchups to get gm. well, 4gate in WoL did that too you even alluded to it in this video. and proxy oracle + delayed 4 gate did it in hots. and what about stephano's 11 minute roach max? there were many broken strategies in this game that could be used against every matchup with no f's given to your opponents build order.
Ah Yes, the good ol' 4 warpgate rush. I used that many, many times as a bronze league ladder hero. I would actually put my proxy pylon right beside their mineral line lol
There used to be an strategy that many considered broken and that made TvP almost in Terran favor every single time, it was on WoL, i think it was called 1,1,1 ... 1 Barracks, 1 Factory, 1 Starport... And you launched an all in with Marines, Meds, and Tanks and it was so difficult to defend. I honestly don't remember what happened to that, it was nerfed, or maybe Protoss learned to defend It but i do remember there were some complain about how it was nearly impossible to win against this.
Mass Mutas and Redesigned Swarm Host "Hit & Run". I don't know why Swarmhost aren't abused anymore, because they're waaay overtuned. But Mutalisks give me nightmare to this day. Ever since WoL.
The main issue with swarmhosts nowadays is that they're so supply heavy and have a long delay, you have to gamble on that first locust wave to do considerable damage to justify them. If you do; you're a massive lead and can put insane aggression, especially with nydus. If you don't, the opponent can start punishing you hard with either great military numbers or just outmacro'ing you. That delay between locusts basically gives the opponent free reign.
Damn I never knew about some of these changes. I've been playing on and off sc2 over the years and never played during the tankivacs Era. That shit seem super op.
As someone who played a ton up to GM the worst meta was turtle Terran into just only Ravens. As zerg there is basically nothing you could do about it even if you won the game was just miserable. Widow mines/swarm hosts are an honorable mention of absolute dog shit unit design.
Oh, boy, I remember in the early WoL TvP having 1 base 1-1-1 that was basically unstoppable. It didn't matter if you scouted or not, it was broken and impossible to stop as toss.
Oh yeah, and 4 gate mentioned in the video has even nastier version in PvP, where you would build pylons behind opponents mineral line and just end him. Ah, good old times.
I wouldn't say it was outright unstoppable. It was only so, if protoss tried to take their natural and the terran did a 1-1-1. The thing I liked about WoL is that expansions are not just a gimme, they had to be earned. You can just die of you blindly expand thinking you'll be safe. No way.
I mean this with all due respect, but it’s amazing how bad everyone was back in the early/mid WOL days. That includes myself.. well I’m still bad, but less bad lol.
After adept got added, PVZ was toxic for Z players Nurfing the only real 2 strats to counter Protoss even made Scarlat play protos into some runs because zerg was just so weak. Often her protos into zerg she stomps the zerg most times and it's sorta funny af.
@@noprisoners8621 Well yeah, I could've included it, but I skipped it at time because I already covered that and those were really big, super annoying balance periods. Should've included it but decided to skip for the mentioned reason. The strategies in this video are/were less impactful and some of them were also fixed quickly
...honestly the tank one almost still looks like a good idea, especially in regards to banelings: so much of the game design around Terran _forces_ passive play to the point where even someone maphacking has limited situations where they can be aggressive. putting a cooldown on it seems like a dumb idea though since while it stops them from, well, acting like shitty warp prisms really it does not stop the medivac from getting the tank to a new location or out of a bad location quickly, it just limits the rate at which it can be done...probably just making a short animation for pickup and putdown would do the trick assuming the medivac can't heal during the animation: keep in mind that having the medivacs wrangling tanks is NOT free in opportunity cost
I hate in the lower leagues protoss bunkering and going air .. even they are getting beaten from me everytime (i'm master toss myself) but its so time consuming
@Adarviroh Fan Belarus ht with storm archon zeolots sometimes only oracle into voidrays on my own but without cannons and more exp then the other guy ..
