#123 – StarCast: “No Skill Ceiling. Just a Skill Floor”

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"No Skill Ceiling. Just a Skill Floor" – Episode #123

This Episode:

• Community Spotlight, Ryan McBride, rCraftGaming
• News
• HotS Balance Update #5
• Nerf Incoming: WIdow Mines
• Possibly Sentry Buff Incoming
• Don’t forget! The Asia WCS Finals
• The Results
• GSL Season 4: Code S Semifinals
• GSTL Season 3
• IPTL
• OSL

Hosts: Garrett and Kyle

StarCast is proudly sponsored by:

• Doghouse Systems.com StarCast is proudly sponsored by Doghouse Systems.com.  If you use the code StarCast or Biscuit at checkout, you will get double memory on you next Doghouse System.
• Tweaked Audio.com Go to Tweaked Audio.com for high-performance, noise-reducing ear buds.  Use our code, Starcast to get 30% off plus free shipping on your order. 
• SC2 Quote of the Day.com Daily quotes from the Starcraft 2 community. The site may suck, but the quotes are sick. Make sure to check out the quote archive, with all the quotes from your favorite Starcraft nerds!

Sponsor an episode of StarCast at TheStarCast.com

Coming Up!
Episode # 12
Date: 10/18
Guest: Harstem, Fnatic Academy

Community Spotlight:
Ryan McBride, rCraftGaming

Follow
Ryan: @tgDoctor
rCraftGaming:  @rCraftGaming

News

HotS Beta Update #5 is here
and damn how the Widow Mine has changed.

David Kim braces for the inevitable backlash by saying this:
“As we mentioned last week, our main focus this week was redesigning the Widow Mine and replacing the Oracle’s Phase Shield ability. We made quite a few changes to these units that we’ll get to in the paragraphs below, but first we wanted to talk about a few Mothership Core changes. We heard your concerns regarding last week’s changes  and have made a few additional Mothership Core tuning passes to help make it a stronger defensive option while using Purify but slightly weaker offensively.”

Terran
changes this week are as follows.

Widow Mine
This unit has a new missile ability called Unstable Payload.

1. Unstable Payload is an auto-cast ability that initiates once the Widow Mine is burrowed. It cannot be turned off unless the unit is unburrowed.
2. This ability launches a missile at a target within 5 range, then starts to rearm another missile.
3. Unstable Payload does 160 damage to a single target and 40 splash damage. The missile auto-acquires cloaked units.
4. The missile auto-acquires temporary units like Hallucinations, Infested Terrans, and Locusts.
5. It takes 40 seconds to rearm the missile. The cost is free for now.

The build time of this unit has increased to 40 seconds.
Dragon making disgusting use of new widow mines
David Kim:
For the Widow Mine, we wanted to make a few updates to achieve the following goals:

1. Make the Widow Mine into an actual cloaked threat.
2. Make the Widow Mine into a powerful piece that players can revolve strategies around.
3. Make the Widow Mine into a unit opponents fear, forcing them to react accordingly when Terran players bring them out.

Protoss
Moving on to the Protoss changes

Oracle
The Phase Shield ability has been removed

This unit has a new ability called Void Siphon.

1. The Oracle channels a beam at an enemy structure that deals 3 damage and harvests 3 minerals every second until canceled. (Note: This ability will not cause the opposing player to lose minerals.)
2. The range is 7.
3. The damage/harvest effect ticks when you cast the ability and every sequential second following.
4. Void Siphon costs 50 energy to cast.

David Kim:
The Phase Shield ability is great against Fungal Growth, but because it’s used in such limited circumstances, it’s not all that appealing in most games. As it stands, the Oracle is a harassment caster that only goes for the enemy mineral line, but we thought it would be fun to add a secondary harassment ability that’s not aimed at the mineral line which harasses opponents in a brand new way. The Oracle’s new ability, Void Siphon, allows it to harvest minerals by attacking enemy structures. We’re hoping that this change will open the door for some new harassment options to complement those already in Starcraft II.

Mothership Core
This unit’s Purify ability has changed.

1. When a player casts Purify on their Nexus, it grants the Nexus the ability to attack, no longer requiring the Core to attach itself.
2. The Nexus weapon has a range of 13 and a damage of 20.
3. Purify now lasts for 60 seconds and still costs 100 energy.

The scale of this unit has been lowered to 0.8.

This unit has had its shield/health lowered to 60/130.

This unit now costs 2 supply.

Nerf Incoming: Widow Mines
Horrifying use of Widow Mines by QXC against Goswser.
Husky StarCraft VOD Link – Fast forward to the 12:30 mark and watch the Roaches melt.

Possible Sentry Buff Incoming
David Kim:
Just to clarify, we don’t mean we’re changing Force Fields in any way. We love how the ability works.

What we are thinking currently for the Sentry is what if Hallucination didn’t require an upgrade?

This might be good because:

1. Scouting is more important in HotS due to the added new threats.
2. Protoss has a lot of trouble vs. early Widow Mines. (Hallucinations can be a soft counter until detection is ready)
3. Players who aren’t able to utilize Force Fields well will be able to use the more expensive Hallucinations to combo with their army.

Please remember all this isn’t final decisions, but we’re just trying to be as open about our thoughts as possible. Thanks~
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Don’t forget! The Asia WCS Finals
are this coming weekend, 13th-14th!

These are the finals in Shanghai, China where finalists from every country will be facing off after MONTHS of competition.

Finalists on Liquipedia
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The Results

GSL Season 4: Code S Semifinals

1. GSL on Liquipedia

SK_Rain (P) vs IM_Mvp (T)

1. Rain rock Mvp in Game 1 but in Game 2 Mvp transitioned out of failed cheese and walked right through Rain.
2. What in the hell was Mvp trying to accomplish in Game 3 when he pulled all his SCV’s off his natural?  Rain had more than enough Sentries to stall for Colossus.
3. Garrett: Game 4 is my pick for this series.  The back and forth was just sick, both opponents seemed evenly matched at all times.  Mvp took the win despite buying in to Rain’s feigned Colossus tech.
4. Mvp is going to the GSL finals YET again.  WOW

Liquid_TaeJa (T) vs StarTale_Life (Z)

1. Insane eye-for-an-eye play in Game 1 w/ Life getting Banelings into TaeJa’s mineral line and TaeJa counterattacking into Life’s main.  I would have been equal had TaeJa not let his conga-line of SCV’s get knocked off by Life.  How TaeJa even kept himself in this game is a stumper.
2. Life played so well in Game 2.  TaeJa never really had a chance.  Life 10-pooled and TaeJa accidentally lowered his depot!  TaeJa somehow held on way longer than made sense but Life eventually finished the game.
3. Game 3… just wow.  Great game.  Life is a monster.

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GSTL Season 3

1. GSTL on Liquipedia

StarTale vs MVP
5-4 StarTale

1. Parting not doing as well as he did against Prime in last week’s IPTL game but he still managed to take out Sniper and DongRaeGu.

1. Keen deserves a freaking medal.  Being the only Terran to be able to take a game off Life this week with heavy Hellion play.

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IPTL

1. IPTL on Liquipedia
2. VODs

Last night:
StarTale vs TSL
Parting staying strong and damn near as terrifying as he was last week, taking the first 4 games against TSL finally dropping to Polt in Game 5 only to have Sound step up and win the series for StarTale.
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OSL

1. OSL on Liquipedia
2. VODs ($11.99 per season)

Rain may have just missed out on a GSL Finals spot but he did manage to win over Last in a 4-3 victory to secure the first spot in the OSL finals.

MC will play DRG this Tuesday to see who moves on to face Rain.
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Feedback
If you’d like to send in an email write us at StarCastShow@gmail.com!

James from Australia
Hey Starcast Crew/guest/community

After hearing what you said about he carrier needing something new in one of your latest episodes, I thought I’d write in about an idea I’ve had for a while now.

What if all Carriers had the ability to kamikaze its entire store of interceptors into an enemy unit dealing mass splash damage similar to brood war scourge?

It would mean that during a direct engagement with a ton of clumped Corrupters/Vikings that the opposing player would have to use some time to actually split the forces up instead of just "A moving" them into a battle and the trade off would be having 0 damage on your carrier till you rebuilt the interceptors. It would also mean that Protoss had an ability to deal with large clumps of bio when going air, as opposed to being forced to go either colossi or templar storms.

If these reasons weren’t enough already, just imagine the inevitable GSL moment when 5 carriers unload on an enemy army coming out of a mothership vortex…

I’d love to hear your thoughts on my idea, or any tweaks you’ve come up with yourselves.

James from Australia
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Andreios
Responding to last week’s discussion of whether SC2 should be free to play, I just want to say that Garrett really hit the nail on the head with his two great points:

1)  The concept of "skin in the game:"  if you pay for something, it’s more likely that you’ll want to take care of it and keep the experience positive.
2)  The idea that Blizzard ought to make money from its work developing the game, and we’re less likely to see new content if Blizz has no financial incentive to provide it.

Well said sir!  To the last point I would add only this question for discussion:  if there is no cost to buying the game license except for the campaign, how exactly is Blizzard supposed to monetize the game to produce sufficient revenue for further development?  Having never played LoL, I don’t know how they do it, but all I can think of is ad banners in my game client, and ads running every time I hit that find match button.  I suppose Raynor could be communicating on a SteelSeries headset for a little product placement revenue…

I’d also like to briefly address the entire concept that Blizzard should make their product available for free.  Like Garrett pointed out, is it really so great a burden to buy the game once up front?  Is two and a half year’s worth of game enjoyment really not worth $40-60?  The team at Blizzard worked on StarCraft II for at least seven years (if not longer – I’m basing that on the time between WC3: Frozen Throne and SC2.)  What right do we have to ask that they just deliver that work to us with no compensation?  They made a great game, and they deserve to be paid for that product.

Thanks for your time and the continually great shows!

Regards,
andreios
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SC2 Quote of the Day Trivia
For the live chat room.  SC2Quotes is in the live chat and will be giving SC2Quotes stickers to whoever can tell me the name of who said these quotes:

1. "Forge expand or die trying." – (Naniwa)
1. http://www.sc2quoteoftheday.com/?date=14-Jan-12

1. "Be safe: always, always, always wear a cannon." – (Apollo)
1. http://www.sc2quoteoftheday.com/?date=12-Jan-12

1. "When your opponent attacks, defend. If he defends, expand. If he expands, attack." – (Artosis)
1. http://www.sc2quoteoftheday.com/?date=20-Jun-12

1. "Only one click, 6 supply." – (Goody)
1. http://www.sc2quoteoftheday.com/?date=08-Jun-12

1. "You can’t play Starcraft with a clenched fish." - (Tasteless)
1. http://www.sc2quoteoftheday.com/?date=26-Mar-12

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