BGMWSS: Maximum Upgrade Advantage - On top of rushing your own upgrades, scout often (hallucination, obs, etc) to find the location of the opponents upgrade buildings and snipe them repeatedly so they never can get any upgrade. This might require specific units, tech, and tactics to prevent the opponent from ever getting upgrades, such as pulling them out of position, using specific upgrades like Tectonic Destabilizers for Tempests, Flux Vanes for Voidrays, blink squads, zealot warp-ins, etc. The ultimate goal is to win while fully upgraded 3/3/(3) vs they are still 0/0/0.
@@AntiDoctor-cx2jd I'll need to rewatch that one but my recollection was that the prevention of upgrades wasn't super successful especially later in the game, but maybe I'm misremembering it. Obviously once the opponent figures it out, they will be more defensive, so there needs to be increasing creativity to try and distract them and/or use that to the advantage that they won't be able to defend elsewhere.
@@mothrahlurker788 this is precisely why a lot of creative tactics, aka "special tactics" to quote a great Ukrainian Protoss God ;) are needed, either to force them from a defensive position and/or taking advantage that the opponent would be overly protective of upgrade buildings and thus out of position elsewhere or low map control for easier expanding, etc. But yes definitely agree that just ramming normal units into the meat grinder futility trying to stop upgrades won't be super effective. Hopefully special forces sent in will have better plans than just suicide...
@@BucksterMcgee It's been a while. I know he was pretty successful at sniping the upgrades, and I know for sure he won at least 1 game, but I don't know how many he won or played. My memory says something like he won 2/3 but it could be wrong.
The first game seemed like one of those games of old where all the best players in the world just refused to put down any static defense, no matter how much one or two cannon or battery might have done.
Dear Harstem. Yesterday I watched another channel stream some SC2 and immediately noticed how smart and eloquent the streamer was. They stuck to the game and didn't provide any updates or commentary about creatures roaming the map. It was insipid. What about the CREATURES?!? Anyway, no shade on that other streamer but wanted to thank you for what you bring. Stupidity, laughter, fun, and no compromises on the insightful SC commentary. Change nothing, I love the channel.
Yes. 100% this. I'm not even a StarCraft 2 player since the days of HuskyStarcraft and HDStarcraft, and Harstem has made me a fan and while I can't play at all anymore, I feel like I could do a somewhat competent build if I did.
I've often felt that upgrades were underrated. I'm only a masters player, so my perspective may not be as great as a GM, but it feels great to see this and see my sentiment being shared by Harstem!
Ghosts are more of a mid to late game unit, so by the time they come out you'll probably already have 2 levels of it if you macro right. The only difference between that and just directly nerfing EMP is that tying it to the shields upgrade is much more punishing on lower level players with worse macro
maybe yes but remeber that every protoss unit has more life than shield's points. So i'm not sure if it's worth to research so early shirelds upgrades just for ghost and giving up on arrmor.. @@scrapbotcommander
The big advantage with upgrade rushes isnt the 1/1 timing but the 2/2+ timings. This is bc with 1/1 you invested resources into the building and the upgrades themselves while your opponent will have those resources in units. This stage of the game has low unit counts so the unit advantage matters more. But when you hit 2/2+ your opponent will have started upgrades or hit 1/1. Thus they used resources on making the buildings and the armies should be closer in unit numbers meaning the extra upgrades really hit home.
Not getting shield upgrades is like not using a safety belt because it doesn't matter at speeds above 80kmh. Most travel might be at those speeds, but for the lower speeds, not all terrans land the emp all the time, and it doesn't hit all units every time.
BGGWSS: Phoenix Fakeout. Build a bunch of sentries asap (10?). Hallucinate a fleet of phoenix. Fly them by your opponents base, but don't show that they are hallucinations to trick them into playing anti air units. Followup with ground units. Should work great with vs Zerg.
I too, started F2'ing, after trying the meme-clone build. Can say, it works perfectly, with the 2nd fact proxied... Man terran plays itself around 4k mmr
@29:40 I ran it in a unit tester. 27 stalkers with +2 +1 vs 34 stalkers with +0 +0. Higher stalker number wins by 7 to 10 stalkers if both sides a move. Tested it with open terrain and chokes, result stays the same. Upgrades don't seem to matter much in stalker on stalker action.
22 vs 18 damage. 80/0 shields, 80/2 and 80/1 hp. 80 58 36 14 73 52 31 10 0 so 8 hits for 2/1 to kill 80 72 54 36 18 0 73 56 39 22 5 0 so 11 hits for 0/0 to kill A blink in full engage has 27 killing 27/8/34 fraction (9.9%) of 0/0 and 34 killing 34/11/27 (11.4%) per cycle. Unless the enemy agrees to 1:1 duels (or close) 27 isn't enough. On the other hand, every reinforcment for the 27 is huge. Two stalkers (29 vs 34) and the 2/1s win the brawl. Up it to 3/3 vs 1/1 and it is 24 vs 20 damage and 4 vs 2 armor. 80 56 32 8 64 42 20 0 7 hits for 3/2 80 60 40 20 0 64 48 32 16 0 9 hits for 1/1 Note 1/1 vs 3/2 and 3/3 is the same hits. But 1/1 vs 3/3/1 is an extra hit! This assumes full HP stalkers. On less than full HP things get more continuous. And protoss shield regen and blink means a good chunk of stalkers start a fight with 80 shields and a touch of hull damage.
You should try using less stalkers because they benefit less from upgrades. The damage increased by +1 instead of +2 (+3 armoured) for immortals and zealots getting +1 with 2 attacks.
If you are focussed on pure numbers, they still can be useful, because of how little supply they need. Not least because of the mobility. A large army with tons of units that take up lots of space is hard to get a good engagement with. It's a bit like the mass roach battles of ZvZ we used to get. You could really see how the mass of units and the terrain interacted there. I think the Stalkers are mostly about the Blink enabling them to get out of the way, possibly blink forward and deal some burst damage. But of course they'll be bad when it comes to a sustained battle. So you'd still need tons and tons of Zealots.
Ahh I tested it out and they do get +2 vs armoured at least. I didn't realize that. They don't attack 2x though, each attack did 18 damage against my own building shield and 20 with 1 upgrade.@@sneediumminer
i thought he was making WAY too many stalkers. Zealots with an upgrade lead wreck bio while stalkers rely totally on dancing round the fight, upgrades help but only a little.
First game last battle was not surprising and fair. 200vs 200 but Harstem has 30 more workers. This reminds me one of old video. 200 supply pure army all in beat gm with stupid stuff😂
7:20 you know banshee is comming built some damn photons at your mineral line, at least it gives vision and safety for drone pulls, if you take good trade you can built 2 and it's safe for banshee, widow mines, 8 marine drops, 2 hellion runby, basically it is safe untill mid game.. and its only 600 minerals.
15:06 900min is 2 photon+3batteries+2 pylons, that's roughly 500+600+400 EHP + 150energy=450 shield; 1550ehp extra + some dmg, and would take 3 emps to empty. yes it's not fantastic; but you know better than nothing :P also it's T terran is so overpowered now its ridiculess; you need serious builts or playing some nubling who's real mmr is 200+ under you to have a chance vs. Terran... Terran can LITERALLY mass any T1 units and win by a-move.... and once they get 5+ ghost they need to be outplayed so ridiculessly hard to lose... so yer, honestly i hate seeing terran bc they are so ridiculessly OP and no decision matters for them bc everything they have counters everything existing, and everything they have is so ridiculessly overtuned; be it losing 50 workers, doesnt matter, losing 50 army supply doesnt matter, leaving enemies in your base for minutes doesnt matter, not having any detection when hit by invis doesnt matter, proxying 3+ production outside enemy base doesn't matter. etcetcetc. all stuff which would make both P and Z instantly lose if ANY off them happened... but T, doesnt matter they are so ridiculessly overtuned after Years off buffs to T and Nerfs to everything that can remotely counter them... fking dumb.
Stalker vs Stalker upgrades don't really matter besides attack upgrades. You need 2 Armour and 1 shield or 3 armour to actually reduce the number of attacks a stalker requires by 1. And that works as long as your opponent has 0 to 2 attack upgrades at +3 only 2 armour matters as even if you are 3/3 shields and armour you still only reduce the attacks to kill by 1. When upgrades matter is when you start factoring in Zealots. Shield upgrades are probably more important actually in PvP as even if stalker battles all you really require is +3 shields and any shield battery or overcharge is going to get MASSIVE value. TLDR: Going to need Sentry to make upgrades matter in Stalker vs Stalker.
looses 21 workers to a single banshee instead of making one real phoenix, one right click patrol observer for said phoenix, and pushing the banshees back to the dead space of the opponents main base. priceless. somethings money cant buy, for every thing else there's harstem card.
that first game he had really nothing for the first part of the game just a few cars for map sight and a couple cheesy invisible banshees... you know they are coming, even said it. just a couple cannons and guard your basis a bit more. his only hope of winning this was to kill about 20 workers with invisible unit...awful strategy by him honestly. still a close fight at the end imagine if you had about 30 more stalkers there...LOL
Somebody explain that first game to me... That seemed bad for somebody like Harstem... Perhaps because he doesn't have a good feel for mass upgrade builds?!? Imho, mass upgrades are better early on and with a lot of zealots. Throwing them away in such numbers for harassment doesn't seem like a good idea when you are basically on a timer vs mass upgraded bio. Though I guess it's difficult to get a proper fight with the chargelots always running outside the guardian shield, limited frontline space and the kiting of the Terran as well as the ranged support falling behind. 2 base with focus on fast armor and perhaps a warp prism to overwhelm with mass zealots would be cool to see out of Harstem. (Edit: DTs are probably not worth the effort, but their blink and burst damage and potential to block a kiting army, might be worth considering. But it might be easier to just Zealot flank.) Yeah, yeah, I know. Low-level player complaining about the gameplay of one of the best players in the world :D
I love the idea of this but your unit composition transitions seem too slow to leverage when you had the biggest upgrade advantage. Also, why not just put up 1 or 2 cannons to zone out and discourage the Banshee play?
let me start by saying, I do not play SC, I like to watch sometime videos of it. But after 15 mins in your video, I'm asking myself how do you consider this (good) content? You want to rush Upgrades and then lose because your opponent has the same upgrades. He beat you not by playing your game but by playing his own? That is just weak, fiddling around randomly and then get beat because you couldn't do this strategy? What a waste of my life watching this.
BGMWSS: Maximum Upgrade Advantage - On top of rushing your own upgrades, scout often (hallucination, obs, etc) to find the location of the opponents upgrade buildings and snipe them repeatedly so they never can get any upgrade. This might require specific units, tech, and tactics to prevent the opponent from ever getting upgrades, such as pulling them out of position, using specific upgrades like Tectonic Destabilizers for Tempests, Flux Vanes for Voidrays, blink squads, zealot warp-ins, etc. The ultimate goal is to win while fully upgraded 3/3/(3) vs they are still 0/0/0.
he has done this one :) ! It went pretty well
This is just not very realistic to pull off without sacrificing so many units that you die.
@@AntiDoctor-cx2jd I'll need to rewatch that one but my recollection was that the prevention of upgrades wasn't super successful especially later in the game, but maybe I'm misremembering it. Obviously once the opponent figures it out, they will be more defensive, so there needs to be increasing creativity to try and distract them and/or use that to the advantage that they won't be able to defend elsewhere.
@@mothrahlurker788 this is precisely why a lot of creative tactics, aka "special tactics" to quote a great Ukrainian Protoss God ;) are needed, either to force them from a defensive position and/or taking advantage that the opponent would be overly protective of upgrade buildings and thus out of position elsewhere or low map control for easier expanding, etc.
But yes definitely agree that just ramming normal units into the meat grinder futility trying to stop upgrades won't be super effective. Hopefully special forces sent in will have better plans than just suicide...
@@BucksterMcgee It's been a while. I know he was pretty successful at sniping the upgrades, and I know for sure he won at least 1 game, but I don't know how many he won or played. My memory says something like he won 2/3 but it could be wrong.
So many forges, no cannons.
He did build a canon in the first game
MaNa got a cannon rush series if you wanna scratch that itch
So poetical
The first game seemed like one of those games of old where all the best players in the world just refused to put down any static defense, no matter how much one or two cannon or battery might have done.
“He’s going to build 2 banshees” - Harstem
Doesn’t build any cannons in the mineral line or leave stalkers. - also Harstem
what part of "no money, just upgrades" didn't get through?
"I would do a lot of things if I were him, none of them would be sitting at home" - Harstem, while sitting at home. 7:59
Dear Harstem. Yesterday I watched another channel stream some SC2 and immediately noticed how smart and eloquent the streamer was. They stuck to the game and didn't provide any updates or commentary about creatures roaming the map. It was insipid. What about the CREATURES?!? Anyway, no shade on that other streamer but wanted to thank you for what you bring. Stupidity, laughter, fun, and no compromises on the insightful SC commentary. Change nothing, I love the channel.
Yes. 100% this. I'm not even a StarCraft 2 player since the days of HuskyStarcraft and HDStarcraft, and Harstem has made me a fan and while I can't play at all anymore, I feel like I could do a somewhat competent build if I did.
Do this again, but snipe the opponent's forges, engineering bays and evolution chambers on top of it! :D
Great idea. A battle between a 30 supply 3/3/3 army and a 100 supply 0/0 army would be interesting.
He has done this one, and it went well. I think he got a 5 upgrade advantage.
i would totally watch harstem going into the unit tester and doing research
He's dabbled.
Beating Grandmasters with upgraded cannons
"I don't care about that base" -- I was actually hoping Harstem would start singing "I'm all about that bass"
No trouble
I've often felt that upgrades were underrated. I'm only a masters player, so my perspective may not be as great as a GM, but it feels great to see this and see my sentiment being shared by Harstem!
i really don't get it why noone came up with idea to make shields upgrades reduce emp damage....
Ghosts are more of a mid to late game unit, so by the time they come out you'll probably already have 2 levels of it if you macro right. The only difference between that and just directly nerfing EMP is that tying it to the shields upgrade is much more punishing on lower level players with worse macro
maybe yes but remeber that every protoss unit has more life than shield's points. So i'm not sure if it's worth to research so early shirelds upgrades just for ghost and giving up on arrmor.. @@scrapbotcommander
7:50 - i mean you have the forges, why not a cannon by the mineral line?
His problem was being out of position with the stalkers, the cannon covers detection but it doesn't protect the mineral line fully either.
@@mothrahlurker788 ah ok
The big advantage with upgrade rushes isnt the 1/1 timing but the 2/2+ timings. This is bc with 1/1 you invested resources into the building and the upgrades themselves while your opponent will have those resources in units. This stage of the game has low unit counts so the unit advantage matters more. But when you hit 2/2+ your opponent will have started upgrades or hit 1/1. Thus they used resources on making the buildings and the armies should be closer in unit numbers meaning the extra upgrades really hit home.
Uthermal did a similar build recently, I unironically think that triple forge upgrades in pvp could be the new meta
Not getting shield upgrades is like not using a safety belt because it doesn't matter at speeds above 80kmh. Most travel might be at those speeds, but for the lower speeds, not all terrans land the emp all the time, and it doesn't hit all units every time.
BGGWSS: Phoenix Fakeout. Build a bunch of sentries asap (10?). Hallucinate a fleet of phoenix. Fly them by your opponents base, but don't show that they are hallucinations to trick them into playing anti air units. Followup with ground units.
Should work great with vs Zerg.
That banshee taking out 16 probes really hurt you. Add more focus to protecting mineral line.
I too, started F2'ing, after trying the meme-clone build. Can say, it works perfectly, with the 2nd fact proxied... Man terran plays itself around 4k mmr
@29:40 I ran it in a unit tester. 27 stalkers with +2 +1 vs 34 stalkers with +0 +0. Higher stalker number wins by 7 to 10 stalkers if both sides a move. Tested it with open terrain and chokes, result stays the same. Upgrades don't seem to matter much in stalker on stalker action.
22 vs 18 damage. 80/0 shields, 80/2 and 80/1 hp.
80 58 36 14 73 52 31 10 0 so 8 hits for 2/1 to kill
80 72 54 36 18 0 73 56 39 22 5 0 so 11 hits for 0/0 to kill
A blink in full engage has 27 killing 27/8/34 fraction (9.9%) of 0/0 and 34 killing 34/11/27 (11.4%) per cycle.
Unless the enemy agrees to 1:1 duels (or close) 27 isn't enough. On the other hand, every reinforcment for the 27 is huge. Two stalkers (29 vs 34) and the 2/1s win the brawl.
Up it to 3/3 vs 1/1 and it is 24 vs 20 damage and 4 vs 2 armor.
80 56 32 8 64 42 20 0 7 hits for 3/2
80 60 40 20 0 64 48 32 16 0 9 hits for 1/1
Note 1/1 vs 3/2 and 3/3 is the same hits. But 1/1 vs 3/3/1 is an extra hit!
This assumes full HP stalkers. On less than full HP things get more continuous. And protoss shield regen and blink means a good chunk of stalkers start a fight with 80 shields and a touch of hull damage.
Dealing with cloak banshees without blink or SG feels so hopeless
You should try using less stalkers because they benefit less from upgrades. The damage increased by +1 instead of +2 (+3 armoured) for immortals and zealots getting +1 with 2 attacks.
If you are focussed on pure numbers, they still can be useful, because of how little supply they need. Not least because of the mobility. A large army with tons of units that take up lots of space is hard to get a good engagement with. It's a bit like the mass roach battles of ZvZ we used to get. You could really see how the mass of units and the terrain interacted there. I think the Stalkers are mostly about the Blink enabling them to get out of the way, possibly blink forward and deal some burst damage. But of course they'll be bad when it comes to a sustained battle. So you'd still need tons and tons of Zealots.
stalkers shoot twice so they actually get +2 and they also get +4 vs armored
Ahh I tested it out and they do get +2 vs armoured at least. I didn't realize that. They don't attack 2x though, each attack did 18 damage against my own building shield and 20 with 1 upgrade.@@sneediumminer
This is the best one. Such a fun episode
Idea for video - proxy a base first thing and best grandmasters still :D
i thought he was making WAY too many stalkers. Zealots with an upgrade lead wreck bio while stalkers rely totally on dancing round the fight, upgrades help but only a little.
First game last battle was not surprising and fair. 200vs 200 but Harstem has 30 more workers. This reminds me one of old video. 200 supply pure army all in beat gm with stupid stuff😂
“economy is overrated”. Got it cap, now I’ll make plat for sure
Starcraft 2 reFORGEd!
I mission in uselessness is an interesting twist the the expression exercise in futility
The thing with fast upgrades is attacking when your up.
7:20 you know banshee is comming built some damn photons at your mineral line, at least it gives vision and safety for drone pulls, if you take good trade you can built 2 and it's safe for banshee, widow mines, 8 marine drops, 2 hellion runby, basically it is safe untill mid game.. and its only 600 minerals.
13:38 the saddes photon cannon; it's supposed to solo the entire army xD
15:06 900min is 2 photon+3batteries+2 pylons, that's roughly 500+600+400 EHP + 150energy=450 shield; 1550ehp extra + some dmg, and would take 3 emps to empty. yes it's not fantastic; but you know better than nothing :P
also it's T terran is so overpowered now its ridiculess; you need serious builts or playing some nubling who's real mmr is 200+ under you to have a chance vs. Terran...
Terran can LITERALLY mass any T1 units and win by a-move.... and once they get 5+ ghost they need to be outplayed so ridiculessly hard to lose... so yer, honestly i hate seeing terran bc they are so ridiculessly OP and no decision matters for them bc everything they have counters everything existing, and everything they have is so ridiculessly overtuned; be it losing 50 workers, doesnt matter, losing 50 army supply doesnt matter, leaving enemies in your base for minutes doesnt matter, not having any detection when hit by invis doesnt matter, proxying 3+ production outside enemy base doesn't matter. etcetcetc. all stuff which would make both P and Z instantly lose if ANY off them happened... but T, doesnt matter they are so ridiculessly overtuned after Years off buffs to T and Nerfs to everything that can remotely counter them... fking dumb.
I remember the euro crisis and the bank crisis. But I was just having a blast playing SC2. I agree Captain the economy is overrated
Stalker vs Stalker upgrades don't really matter besides attack upgrades.
You need 2 Armour and 1 shield or 3 armour to actually reduce the number of attacks a stalker requires by 1.
And that works as long as your opponent has 0 to 2 attack upgrades at +3 only 2 armour matters as even if you are 3/3 shields and armour you still only reduce the attacks to kill by 1.
When upgrades matter is when you start factoring in Zealots.
Shield upgrades are probably more important actually in PvP as even if stalker battles all you really require is +3 shields and any shield battery or overcharge is going to get MASSIVE value.
TLDR: Going to need Sentry to make upgrades matter in Stalker vs Stalker.
14:15 I complained about this to in a too small a game report to be casted. even if they are 2.2 still would got shredded.
i think if you see 2 forge you could just double expand and overwhelm you despite the upgrade difference
At no point was there enough units to handle the terran. Lots of copium though.
@@dirkbester9050 the 30 dead probes to 2 banshees didnt help
Something is a little off when "I'm just down in upgrades" can be even be spoken when doing an upgrade rush.
Can't wait to find the time to watch thuis HAHAHAHAHA
Idea for beating GMs with stupid stuff: go 2 rax pressure from WoL, even research stim behind it, but go mech behind it.
16 probes? - and no cannons?
love this strat kinda wholesome ive done it for years was hoping you would too XD
UPGRADE RUSH without cronoboost another sc2 player did that (cough cough beaztymtzy) tried that and... Let's see your take on it
What do you think of going +1 on cyber core before the warp gate
Lets just Skip Warpgate and go Protoss Mech only with Robo and Stargate
looses 21 workers to a single banshee instead of making one real phoenix, one right click patrol observer for said phoenix, and pushing the banshees back to the dead space of the opponents main base. priceless. somethings money cant buy, for every thing else there's harstem card.
Mentally victory 😂
It's impressive how badly protoss gets blasted by lower tier terran units on lower upgrades.
16:42 u just need distuptors earlier bro..
that first game he had really nothing for the first part of the game just a few cars for map sight and a couple cheesy invisible banshees... you know they are coming, even said it. just a couple cannons and guard your basis a bit more. his only hope of winning this was to kill about 20 workers with invisible unit...awful strategy by him honestly. still a close fight at the end imagine if you had about 30 more stalkers there...LOL
I think I got second hand copium from that first game
Somebody explain that first game to me... That seemed bad for somebody like Harstem... Perhaps because he doesn't have a good feel for mass upgrade builds?!? Imho, mass upgrades are better early on and with a lot of zealots. Throwing them away in such numbers for harassment doesn't seem like a good idea when you are basically on a timer vs mass upgraded bio. Though I guess it's difficult to get a proper fight with the chargelots always running outside the guardian shield, limited frontline space and the kiting of the Terran as well as the ranged support falling behind.
2 base with focus on fast armor and perhaps a warp prism to overwhelm with mass zealots would be cool to see out of Harstem.
(Edit: DTs are probably not worth the effort, but their blink and burst damage and potential to block a kiting army, might be worth considering. But it might be easier to just Zealot flank.)
Yeah, yeah, I know. Low-level player complaining about the gameplay of one of the best players in the world :D
Why get 3 3 to defend?
Plz do it with zerg. Would love to see how it fares in zvt or zvp
If only shield upgrades meant something in PvT...
29:45 do it in the simulator upload it I'd watch to see if you'd won
I love the idea of this but your unit composition transitions seem too slow to leverage when you had the biggest upgrade advantage. Also, why not just put up 1 or 2 cannons to zone out and discourage the Banshee play?
sad we didnt get a PvZ :( perhaps another episode?
Forge is Borge
It is true "Upgrade Rush"? Just try fake or not committed cannon rush into triple forge
let me start by saying, I do not play SC, I like to watch sometime videos of it. But after 15 mins in your video, I'm asking myself how do you consider this (good) content? You want to rush Upgrades and then lose because your opponent has the same upgrades. He beat you not by playing your game but by playing his own? That is just weak, fiddling around randomly and then get beat because you couldn't do this strategy? What a waste of my life watching this.