StarCraft 2

I did a quick normal run just to get some xp for Alarak and I really thought I was going to puke. That was awful.

This week's mutation isn't bad on Normal/Hard with certain commanders, but Brutal is a literal ball buster. A single normal spawn upgrading into a hybrid and earning an extra nuke can royally fubar your day.

edit: managed to do as Artanis with a Raynor partner. I went tempests to try and snipe hybrids from afar whenever possible, he obviously went Vulture/Viking and spider mined the map to fuck.

aXiomatic Acquires Controlling Interest in Team Liquid, a Leading Professional Esports Franchise | Business Wire

Damn, I still remember Nony winning TSL 2 and Jaedong wrecking everybody like it was yesterday...

Yeah I'm not sure why actual businesses are going so hard for esports orgs recently. It feels like a bubble. There is literally no money in esports right now all these valuations seem based on speculation. With that said: Good for Nazgul. He's been in the esports scene forever and staked a ton on it. I hope they made a pretty penny.

I think it has to do with rather low barrier for entry and the ever elusive 18-35 demographic that advertisers keep chasing. If you have good enough ideas, they can market almost any product. Liquid as a brand also has a pretty dedicated following and they managed to diversify into multiple games, which keeps the risks low and they keep very clean and likeable image (mostly). Thanks to the community support, the watchers might even be inclined to use less adblockers. So if you want to enter the field, there aren't many other brands with the same resume. LoL teams are for the most part focused on LoL, otherwise what is out there ? Fnatic, Dignitas that just got investors too, CIS teams that aren't very famous in NA and, like, CoL ?

It's not quite like the chinese buying Dota 2 teams, but I don't think they expect huge returns in the next 5 years, however the horse is here to stay and for how long has Nazgul been working on the whole thing, I think he deserves the payday.

What?!

The kid who was playing in TL opens ? Koreans usually hate losing to foreigners, so the "they weren't playing srs" excuse goes ouut of the window. Con-fucking-grats

I'm not sure how long the Korean Starcraft scene is going to hang around. KeSPA teams are losing their sponsors rather quickly.

SC2 was never embraced as much over in Korea, the BW scene is still larger and has more money/sponsors which is why Blizzard wants to update it and eventually ditch battle.net 1.0

Did this week's Brutal mutation first try as Vorazun with a decent Kerrigan partner. Basically she operated solo hero mode while I supported with DTs and cloaked corsairs that could rezz, poured all her money into ultras and we immobilization waved + time stopped to crush the first half of the final base, backed off to let all my rezzed units return and then finished the remaining.

Skipped bonus and raced against the clock since limited resources/units.

What difficulty?

Too many retards this week with Diplomatic Immunity to do Brutal, even level 90 ones. What's the point of noting "Oh it's terran, heavy air" and then proceeding to build only roaches.

edit: passed through with a 54 Zagara partner who kept a maxed army and would actually help kill stuff before it got wrecked. Important Note: on the last double train spawn one is completely immune to a commander so you help kill the support and focus on your own.

So Nova looks like she'll be pretty cool. No real base or army management, you just train super units, limit 1 of each type looks like. Curious to see exactly how it works out.

She's like Zagara except the whole "rebuilding your army" thing. I guess it's time to finally buy Alarak since everybody will be spamming her.

Wonder if they're going to nerf Alarak (god only knows why they would do that).

I'm not very satisfied with Alarak. Ascendants are a pita because the time you spend spamming orbs is time you aren't spending controlling Alarak and they chew through supplicants like mad. Vanguards are strong but the inability to attack air is pretty awful since your only option to back them up is Slayers which are pretty mediocre. Mass Wrathwalker is amazing though.

My biggest disappointment with Alarak is not being able to mass destroyers. Easily my favorite campaign unit, although I suppose the death fleet calldown makes more sense since the Tal'darim don't have the supporting stargate units that the other protoss commanders have.

They would have to buff supplicants or something if they nerfed Alarak's AE ability, there's just no way to deal with mass zergling/marines otherwise.

My alarak currently is about level 10 (i'm mastery level ~58 or so) and yeah he does seem pretty strong but I agree with Twilight where Ascendants are so overpowered that you'd rather spend your micro on them and using your orb / mindblast spells if needed. I know overall they are stronger but I tend to just do a massive Alarak/Supplicant/Wraithwalker deathball. Then I can just focus all my micro on Alarak while everything else just a-moves around.

Just in case I was missing something, I ran a game earlier with vanguards as the core of my army. On top of everything else, they interfere with each others pathing something awful, which is a problem wrathwalkers don't have.

And I'm not necessarily saying ascendants are overpowered, but you really have to ignore alarak to get your max value out of them.

5 KESPA teams disbanded, Proleague is discontinued. SC2 in Korea is on its death bed.

It's weird though because with Byun being teamless and winning GSL and then a foreigner in Neeb winning Kespa Cup, I wonder if it's almost better off for players to just not be on teams, stream for added revenue and still compete. Seems like a ton of pressure off your plate since being a team house means you're side by side all your teammates, sleeping, eating, playing together, etc etc. I mean, hell I bet Byun being teamless and streaming as much as he did earned him a hell of a lot more $$$ then any of the "salary" all these others players had.

Curious to see how it ends up though. I still love me some sc2, although I mainly just play it in co-op and to map make here and there. Hopefully GSL can still go on?