Learning SC2

Harassment is very exciting to watch in professional matches and can be great fun to emulate. Harassment is usually done to gain some sort of advantage through economic damage, disruption of production or by throwing off your opponent. While it seems like harassment would always be good sometimes you will do what seems like a lot of damage and still lose. There are a few things going on below the surface when top-tier players harass and there are some pitfalls to be aware of if you want your harassment to be effective.

Guaranteed Damage

The concept of guaranteed damage is important in harassment and even in normal attacks. You have probably noticed that when people harass they will try and kill workers, Pylons, Supply Depots or Overlords. The reasoning behind this seems kind of obvious, kill your opponents workers and they will be getting less income, kill their supply and they will become supply blocked. However, there is another level of reasoning at work here, guaranteed damage.

This Pylon is known as a 'critical Pylon' and it is a high priority target as it powers four structures.

Guaranteed damage simply means that you will be able to kill what you are trying to kill. If, for example, you drop a Medivac full or Marines in your Protoss opponents base you have a few choices and it may be tempting to go for the one with the biggest reward – the Nexus. However, it may take 30 seconds to kill the Nexus and in that time your units could be killed or repelled, leaving you with no damage done. If, you instead went for Probes or Pylons, which have much less health and are easier to kill, you will be almost guaranteed to do some damage before your opponent can defend.

It is essentially a question of risk vs reward, and you are always much safer going for an easier to obtain but smaller advantage then going for an unlikely to obtain but larger advantage. The following are a few examples of things to target when harassing with the concept of guaranteed damage in mind:

Vs. Protoss

• Probes – Economic damage and easy to kill.
• Pylons – Disrupts production by un-powering structures and affects supply cap. Single Pylons powering multiple buildings are high-priority targets.

Workers mining gas are a good target as killing them can delay your opponents tech and some people will forget to replace them.

Vs. Zerg

• Drones – Economic damage and easy to kill.
• Overlords – Affects supply, easy to kill before speed upgrade and can often be found outside the bases of carless Zergs.
• Queens – Slow if caught off Creep, relatively easy to kill and slows down unit production greatly due to missed Larva Injects.

Two Places at Once 

When harassing your opponent you never want to only attack one spot at a time. It is much easier for your opponent to defend, you are more likely to lose your units without doing any damage. A good example is sending a Medivac full of Hellions to attack your opponents main base. It is very easy for your opponent to pull back their army and kill off your attack before you have a chance to do any damage. If in that same scenario you sent Two Medivacs, one to the main and the other to the opponents third base your opponent may be able to easily defend one (simply retreat the attack that he tries to defend) but the other will go undefended. If instead your opponent splits his army and defends both Hellion drops they will be weak to a frontal assault. If they do neither then they will lose a lot of economy.

Another excellent way to incorporate multi-pronged harassments is to harass while attacking with you main army. While preoccupied with your frontal assault your harassment will likely go unnoticed and will cause a lot of damage. You can then simply retreat your main army and your harassment having doen the damage needed to secure a long-term victory.

Always be on the lookout for ways to spread your opponents resources thin, multi-pronged harassment will achieve this even if it does not actually do any damage. The threat of harassment can often be enough to secure you an advantage.

Frame by Frame example of a two pronged attack.

In the first frame the main army prepares to attack the opponents front while a Warp Prism full of Zealots prepares to drop at the east. In frame 2 the main army engages and the Warp Prism unloads in the mineral line. Having done the damage required to secure victory, the main army retreats in frame 3 to avoid unnecessary losses. Unfortunately the Warp Prism is destroyed preventing the Zealots from escaping but it was a worthwhile trade.

Takes the Opponents Focus

Good harassment will cause your opponent to make mistakes, to let their units get out position and to forget key parts of their build. The threat of harassment, like a Warp Prism sitting just outside their base can stress your opponent out or cause them to make more static defences then they would otherwise like to.

Doesn’t Put You Behind – Micro vs Macro

If your harassment taxes your own attention too much you will macro poorly and may even end up in a worse position than your opponent. Some harassment tactics require more micromanagement than others. Banshee harass and High Templar drops, for example, require a lot of attention and unless you are able to continue macro-ing whilst doing them they should be avoided by beginners. 

However, there is no reason to not apply the same tactics to simpler harassment tactics. For example, attacking the front with your main army while running a few units to an unguarded expansion can be very effective in lower leagues. 

Don’t Force it

The worst thing you can do is to overcommit to harassment. Don’t make harassment your main objective, and if your opponent is able to easily defend themselves then don’t try and force it. Each failed harassment attempt weakens your main army and makes you susceptible to a straight up attack. Incorporate harassment into your normal play while being aware of the above things and you will see a lot of success.

Have you had much success with harassment? Sometimes harassment tactics can seem very powerful and can win you games outright. But then there are other times when you appear to do a lot of damage but actually fall behind. Hopefully this article helps you understand some of the less-known aspects of the popular tactics.

We all have a few (or many) bad habits when it comes to playing Starcraft 2, however, many either don’t realise what they are or don’t feel that they are significantly affecting their play. The following are bad habits that I have dealt with, am dealing with or have seen a lot of. Breaking our bad habits is one thing that we can do to really improve ourselves as players.

Entering ‘Spectator’ Mode

This is one that we have all been guilty of at some point. When it comes time for a big battle we stop playing and watch it happen, who will be the winner? Battles in SC2 look fantastic but save the spectating for replays. Whenever you find yourself just watching the game play itself remember that you should still be working! Macro-ing while battles play out is extremely important, often the winner is the one who was preparing for the next battle not just watching the current one.

Quite an epic battle but watch it in the replay not the game!

Not Using All of the Hotkeys

Often times we know and use the main hotkeys for our race but there is usually one or two hotkeys that we would only use once a game that we never take the time to learn. Whats the hotkey for the Warp Prism speed upgrade? I can’t think of it off the top of my head so I know this is one bad habit that I am personally guilty of.

Why is this an issue if we only use it once a game? It’s not so much the extra time it takes to go down and click the upgrade button but the extra thought it takes. Learn the hotkey and make it as second nature as building workers and you will free your mind up to think of more important strategic decisions.

Not Watching the Minimap

Keeping one eye on the minimap lets me see that there is a counter-attack force trying to flank my army.

On the main screen there are units, battles and all sorts of flashy stuff. The minimap by contrast is relatively dull, but it’s an extremely important tool and you should alway be keeping one of your eyes on it. Falling into the habit of not watching your minimap will result in you missing enemy army movements, drops and expansions.

Breaking this habit is hard work –  to do so you will need to incorporate minimap checks at least every few seconds into your mental to do list.

Your mental to do list should look something like this:

• Build workers.
• Check Minimap.
• Build Units.
• Check Minimap.
• High Minerals? Build Production.
• Check Minimap.

All of this happens in a few seconds, eventually it will seem like you are always looking at the minimap because you wont miss anything. The next bad habit ties in with this one.

Excessive Screen Scrolling

Screen scrolling is when you move your mouse to the edge of the screen (or worse yet using the arrow keys) to move around the map. Screen scrolling should only really be used for slight adjustments or for controlling units during battle. Every other screen movement should either be the result of hotkey use or minimap clicking.

There are two very good reasons why this is the case:

1. Using hotkeys to control your screen movements suggests that you are building units and checking the status of upgrades etc.
2. Controlling your screen position via the minimap ensures that you are looking there more often. Without using it to click around players often fall into the habit I mentioned earlier.

Neglecting Upgrades

Getting to max or have a lot of spare resources? Dual chrono-boosted Forges!

This bad habit has been costing me games lately. I will often get to 1/1 upgrades and forget as the game goes on. Neglecting upgrades becomes more and more of a problem as you start playing longer, more drawn out macro games where the difference in army strength makes a huge difference.

A simple solution to this problem is to make upgrades a part of your ‘getting to max army size’ routine. As you get close to the point where your army is getting maxed out build an extra Forge, Evo Chamber or Engineering Bay and start upgrading two upgrades at once. As your game refinement increases you will find out where you can more effectively squeeze upgrades in but following this ‘max army’ routine is a very good starting point.

Overreacting to Harassment

There are three things that can make harassment effective, direct damage (ie. killed workers etc), taking up attention (forcing you to deal with harassment when you should be macroing) and overreaction. This bad habit tends to develop early on in our Starcraft 2 career when we panic over how to deal with it.

The following are ways that you might overreact to harassment:

• Building a lot of static defences – Cannons, Turrets and Spore Crawlers all take up a lot of minerals that cannot be recovered.
• Sending your entire army to deal with a small harassment – Often this will result in your enemies main army being able to freely attack.
• Pulling all of you workers off of minerals when you only need to pull a few – You will lose mining time that you didn’t really need to.
• Sending everything for a panicked counter attack – Your enemy will likely be prepared and unless you are very far behind a panicked attack is never a good idea.

Each of those things has the potential to do more damage than the harrasment itself. It is, however, possible to avoid all of this damage simply by remaining calm. If you spot a red dot heading somewhere suspicious (you should be watching your minimap, remember?) grab some of your units and immediately send them to intercept via the minimap. Then go see what it is, if it turns out to be nothing then no problem send your troops back. If it is small enough for the units you sent to deal with, great! If it turns out to be much worse, send more of your army to deal with it. Above all else simply remaining calm is your best defence against harassment.

Queuing

This last bad habit is one that a lot of people struggle with even knowing they do it. Queuing up units in your production buildings is all round bad practice. Each unit that is queued up and not currently building is essentially wasted money that could be spent on expanding, upgrading or making more production facilities.

Ideally you want to be starting a new unit just as the one that is currently building finishes, however this can be quite hard to achieve. It requires constantly checking the production status of your buildings which takes time to learn. While you strive for ideal macro queuing up one unit when the first is almost done is a good start. I am still working on this habit myself, at the moment my main queuing problem is with workers – I tend to build them two at a time.

Do you suffer from any of the above bad habits in SC2? What other bad habits are you working on at the moment? I know that lately one of mine has been playing Starcraft when I should be studying for exams.

Every race in Starcraft 2 has its own unique methods of scouting and detecting cloaked units. This presents a challenge for new players, as there are multiple options available to you and the best one to use is often not so clear. Protoss has a few obvious and a few not so obvious ways of scouting. Much of these are simply personal preference but some are more effective in certain match ups than others. Detection, however, is a bit more strict in its use, specifically Photon Cannon placement. Below is what I have learned to be the effective ways to scout as Protoss as well as the best ways to use your detection options.

Scouting With Your 9 Supply Probe

Use that scout and count those drones.

The ‘standard’ time for Protoss to scout with their probe is at 9/10 supply. Typically, this probe warps in your first Pylon and then heads off to the opponents base. For ease of scouting I set this probe to a control group right at the start of the game (control group ‘0’ is my scouting control group). What this Probe is looking for is the key. First off he wants to eliminate the possibility of your opponent doing a ‘cheesy’ or all-in build. Signs of these types of early builds include:

• Vs. Zerg – Very few Drones and a Spawning pool indicates a ‘6 pool’ Zergling rush or similar.
• Vs. Terran – 2 Barracks and no Refinery indicates a possible ‘2 Rax’ Marine rush.
• Vs. Protoss – 2 Warpgates, no Cybernetics Core indicates a ‘2 Gate’ Zealot rush.
• Vs. Protoss – Empty Protoss base, or only a Pylon and Forge indicates a Cannon rush or Proxy gateways. Go scout in and around your base!

The second objective of that Probe is to identify what your opponent might be planning. There are many small things that you might see that can indicate what your opponent’s plans might be and there is an excellent list of these things on the Team Liquid forums here. Please check them out. While this scouting is important do not let it maintain all of your focus. There is nothing worse than knowing exactly what your opponent is doing but not being able to do anything about it because you have been to busy scouting too build anything.

Protoss Scouting Options

Scouting options for Protoss begin limited, just Probes, Zealots and then Stalkers, but as your tech level increases those options increase exponentially. I will simply list the options that I have heard of/discovered, if you know of any more please let everyone know in the comments section!

Hallucination

Hallucinate is available from the Cybernetics Core and you can begin research on it as soon as your Warpgate Tech is finished. Hallucinate allows you to use a Sentry to create a hallucinated unit of your choice. And your choice will almost certainly be to hallucinate a Phoenix to scout your opponents base. There are two nice things about this tech: firstly, if you are not planning on getting air units a few hallucinated air units can force your opponent to build unnecessary air defences. Secondly, you can use this to scout throughout the game without any further financial cost. Note: Do not attack with the Hallucinated units, they don’t do any damage and your opponent will know that it’s a fake!

Observers

Observers are almost a necessity later in the game, and can be a very effective way to scout before then. Often Protoss will settle for just getting one Observer to scout the opponents base/keep an eye out for cloaked units. Observers are cheap, quick to produce and are cloaked. So get lots of them, you can have one at your opponents front, one at each edge of their bases to watch for drops/air unit harass and one checking for your opponents expansions. With the vision provided by your observers and by having units on Xel Naga watchtowers you will be able to instantly shut down any harass or drops before they do any damage.

Phoenix

Dark Templar can do more than just kill workers.

Phoenix are quick to produce, are one of the fastest moving units in the game, have good harassment capabilities (especially against Zerg) and can provide excellent air superiority. With a few Phoenix it is possible to scout and harass your opponent at the same time. A drawback of using Phoenix for scouting is that their costs will weaken your ground army production by a decent amount. By using them to harass your opponent you can negate this somewhat.

Dark Templar

In a similar fashion to Phoenix, Dark Templar (DT) can harass and scout at the same time. Since they are cloaked, your DTs can just wander into an opponents base and scout before popping over to their mineral line for harassment. DTs usefulness for scouting your opponents base is limited if your opponent is prepared with detection. They can still be extremely useful for watching your opponents front and delaying enemy troop movements (as your opponent cannot move out without first getting mobile detection).

My Scouting Experiences

I have had personal success with using lots of observers, particularly against Terran. I find that I am able to shut down drops much better and can keep Terran contained much more effectively with the mobile vision provided by the Observer. Keeping Terran contained provides me with the extra confidence I need to dominate this matchup. PvT is currently my best matchup as Protoss, and I believe it is due to having excellent vision at all times. When I lose that vision is usually when I lose.

Against Protoss opponents I often use Dark Templar to scout, contain and harass and I have had decent success with this approach. I have found that it is necessary to also get Observers in PvP due to the increasing amount of players that seem to be using Warp Prism harass. I feel that PvP is currently my worst matchup and I need to work on maintaining good vision to overcome this hurdle. I may experiment with using Hallucination in this matchup.

I typically use DTs and Observers against Zerg, but I have had success with the Phoenix approach in the past. Zerg can, however, react very quickly to DTs if they are at Lair tech (if not DTs will be the end of them). As such I think I may lean more towards Phoenix in the PvZ matchup in the future.

Photon Cannons

Tucking a Cannon into the minerals like this will help those probes feel safe.

Its good practice to put at least 1 Photon Cannon in each of your mineral patches. This is mainly for the detection they provide but they also act as a deterrent for any light harassment. For as long as your army is fairly close to your bases this will be pretty much all you need. Once you expand more or start to move your army out it is always a good idea to put up extra cannon in the back of each base. This will effectively defend you from any harassment or counter attacks that may come.

I have had many, many games in the past where I have ended up trading bases with my opponent due to a counter attack drop in the back of my main base. I have also lost a lot of games due to cloaked Banshee harass. After I started putting up one Cannon in each of my mineral lines cloaked Banshees have not been a problem. However, I am still having trouble remembering to throw up those extra Cannon later in the game, and it has ended up costing me a few wins.

Do you have any other tips or strategies that you use to scout/detect with Protoss? If so, share them with me below!

I know i'm supposed to scout, but what am I looking for?

I know and i’m sure that you know that it is important to scout. You may even know specifically when you should scout, “Scout at 9/10 after building a Pylon”. I’m sure that sounds familiar. But the harder part to understand is why? The answer to that may seem simple, “To see what our opponent is doing”. But I have been noticing in my games that maybe that idea is causing all of my problems. I don’t really know what indicators of my opponents strategy i’m looking for when I scout, so I usually try to see exactly what they are doing. It can be pretty scary when you don’t know what your opponent is doing so it’s natural to feel like you want to watch their actions as much as possible. But you cant always have vision of your opponent, and on top of that you cant spend all of your time looking at your opponents base. We have to be building things, upgrading, expanding and building workers!

In the upper levels (the Pros) players are familiar with all of the possible things that their opponent could be doing in that particular matchup. They narrow down the possibilities based on what indicators they see until they know exactly what their opponent is doing. For example, DIMAGA recently played a game against MouzNaama, DIMAGA saw one indicator from his opponent, a Hellion. From this he was able to narrow down Naama’s plan to: A tank marine push, probably with Thors. See Day[9] Daily #254 for a cast/analysis of this game.

You will want to move towards learning all of the possible strategies for the match ups you play as you improve in league and skill. However, at the lower levels this seems to not be so important. Strategies are rarely executed cleanly and the indicators that the pros use will not really apply. Put simply, the lower leagues are super unpredictable and you will see all kinds of wacky strategies.

Because of the unpredictability of the games I see and because I couldn’t spend all day looking at my opponents base I settled for just checking if my opponent was doing something funky and then trying to see when he was going to attack. But with this approach I was never ahead of my opponent, I would just do what I was doing, hoping that it was right.

More recently I have been thinking:

“What if it’s not important to see what our opponents are doing, but rather, to see what they are not doing?”

Once I had this thought I started trying to use anything I saw to tell me what my opponent was not doing instead of trying to see exactly what my opponent was doing. I found that by noticing one thing, I could cross off another.

Some common examples I have been noticing include:

• My opponents not getting gas early. That eliminates any tech options from their early game plans, they are either going to expand or rush with mineral only units. “I should stick around to see if they build a bunch of unit producing structures. They aren’t? Okay they are expanding, I should push or expand myself.”
• I dont see an expansion early in the game. I can assume without seeing anything else that they are either building a large force to attack with or they are trying to race towards a particular tech. “I’d better build some units to defend with so I don’t die!”

Scouting in line with this thinking has greatly helped my early game knowledge of what my opponents are doing, and allows me to decide on an appropriate overall strategy. But after this the unpredictability of low-level play really prevents you from predicting your opponents plans with any great degree of accuracy. So how should we scout after this? I have come up with a list of your priorities in scouting that extend throughout the rest of the game.

These scouting priorities are:

1. Finding out if or when an attack is coming. Your first priority is always to not die and knowing when the next attack is coming allows you to decide wether defences are necessary or whether you should expand.
2. Maintaining map control. Map control is vital to your long-term prospects of winning and winning is your first priority after not dying. Vision helps give you map control as it allows you to detect you opponents troop movements and expansion attempts which you can then block.
3. Intercepting harassment attempts. If you have map control your opponent will likely react with attempts at harassment with the aim of reducing your economic advantage or forcing you to pull your forces back. Having excellent vision will allow you to intercept any harassment attempts and prevent your opponent from taking map control from you.
4. Finding out your opponents unit composition. Finding specifically what units your opponent has will allow you to build an attacking force that will be more effective against his.
5. Seeing exactly what your opponent is doing. It’s easy to see why this is the least important function of scouting after listing the above. If you have map control and have denied any attempts at harassment, it doesn’t really matter what your opponent is doing inside his base because you have already won.

Scouting with these priorities in mind rather than trying to see exactly what my opponent was doing has given me a massive boost to my confidence in game. I realise now that wanting to see exactly what your opponent is doing is a natural response to the fear and uncertainty you have when you first start playing Starcraft 2. But it really is the wrong way to dispel that fear and uncertainty as it causes you to simply react to what your opponent is doing rather than taking control yourself.

After all, what makes you feel more confident? Reacting to what your opponent is doing or taking control yourself?