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14:38 PM
I turn on the PC and sign up for ZOTAC. I feel like today could be a winning day (I have more motivation than some of the time when I also ended up losing. Also I feel my shape is somewhat better, and a more balanced shape vs all 4 races).
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8:28 PM
Soon gonna start semis against Kas , and then prolly finals vs ZOTAC! Didn't really have good opponents yet (Except multick but he played rdm). So these are gonna be the real test.
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0:24 AM
Read the comments.. will try to get to them one by one :)
I'll put that at the bottom, OK?
Now, for my tournament run... I wish I could upload replays here, but I can't. So I can do battle reports.
r1 0-0 freewin
r2 1-0 crossy
r3 1-0 gmg-oxygenium
r4 1-0 slap]roll
r5 1-0 iact.n2l.foggy
r6 1-0 multick
r7 2-1 ig.daveron
r8 2-0 dmz.kas
r9 3-2 go)focus
Freewin was by far the easiest game I didn't play of the whole tournament today. I have to admit I was only watching the screen with half an eye during round 1. I don't even remember what race was being played if any at all. I don't think I lost a single unit.
Crossy was an undead I met on Ancient Isles. I did a standard strategy of Shadow Hunter rush with advance shop, following up with a quick Tier 3 tech with double Spirit Lodge. I started pumping out Shamans and gathered them up at the Tavern. Upon reaching Tier 3, I researched Master Shamans and simultaneously picked up a Goblin Tinker and a Pit Lord. Having those, I started my attack which comprised of Fortified Towers, a Rocketpack+Fire reign combination and healing wave to top it off. Demolishers slowly trundled in to rain doom on the UD base.
gmg-oxygenium was another Undead, whom I met on Secret Valley. I did an even more standard Tauren Chieftain first opening, starting off with 3 grunts to get some Stomp surrounds on his fiends. I saved up Headhunters in my base and added raiders, some kodo and T3 tech for all the upgrades that money can buy. He did TeD's strategy (though maybe not quite as good) with T2 towerrush. My TC hit level 5 and Mana pots bolstered his spirits. I drove him off and he called GG.
Roll is a common training partner for me, who also helped me a lot to train against Night Elf before WCG 2008 (ironically I met few Elves - I lost to SaSe twice, however inconsequential, but ended up beating country mate Nicker). So I was definitely cautious about this game. He did DH Huntress opening on Melting Valley while I opted for a rather unusual Blade+grunts opening, followed up by Shadowhunter. He got some bears and I ate some bear meat (kodos). When nothing was left I went to look on another map for more food.
In round 5 I nearly lost to beastmaster close position on Turtle Rock. I did a bad rush and paid the price - ending up with a hard-fought victory. Not proud of myself but it sure got the blood boiling!
Round 6 Multick went Random Orc... the game lasted less than 8 minutes.
Round 7 I met a decent Polish Undead player named Daveron on Echo Isles. The two games where I played fun strats (game 1 & 3) I won, while in game 2 I got punished for playing cookie cutter TC solo. For some reason, I could not end the game despite how much shock waves I cast in his base.
Round 8 I met trouble in the form of Kas - a Ukrainian Human Player who is not bad at all. He rushed me pretty strong on Snowdrop in the first map and I lost a lot. Luckily I followed up with a nailbiting Archmage kill and that equalised the match. We ended up doing a fight more epic than when Gandalf saved everyone in Helm's Deep. The second map on TR was no less intense and I enjoyed playing those games a lot.
Round 9 I met FoCuS... out of 10 good hosts for me normally, it seemed none was really good for me now. It reminds me of that joke:
A man goes to see a doctor. He complains to the doctor, "Doctor, if I press my leg here, it hurts a lot." The doctor inspects his leg and says, "Hmmmm." The man grimaces as he presses his temple, and yells out "Ouch, it hurts a lot when I press here!" The doctor inspects the side of the man's face thoroughly, and reserves his opinion. The man presses his left shoulder and nearly faints from the pain, as he says "it really hurts when I press here..."The doctor looks at the man sternly and says, "I know what's the problem. Your index finger is broken."HAHAHAHAHAhahahaHAHA! :D:D
Well, it was like that: it was my own internet connection for some reason. I was getting a lot of spikes on many different hosts. Eventually I discussed with the admins whether we could have a bit fewers observers and they were very understanding. FoCuS also was very patient so I want to thank him for that. After the ZOTAC was over, my internet went down several times, completely, still don't know why. But I'm happy it didn't happen during the actual games.
The games against FoCuS, in some cases, were really one of a kind. FoCuS is a very strong mirror player. We both made some mistakes now and then but I think that really made the entire series very entertaining to watch. Especially in Game 3 on Echo Isles, I thought to myself: "Now there's a game that will never.. ever be repeated again."
I think you can see most games on WTV so HF.. for now, a satisfied feeling! Thanks for reading!
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Finals vs ZOTAC? you mean Focus most likely
Micro | 04.04.09 - 3:06 pm | #
Yeah, looks kinda similar :P oops (and I did write it very quickly!)
there was a close game in the beginning of the tounament vs an elf on tr...^^
Udaibe | 04.04.09 - 3:34 pm | #
Close? You mean when I had 25/20, no hero and he got level 2 beastmaster with 30+ pop?
Blind_Love, Martin, Jimm: enjoyed the "Dreadlord 2nd hero vs Orc" expose :D Great ideas always seem impossible to implement until someone proves you wrong (and more often than not it does happen!)
Grubby Please, I'd really like an answer to this one because it has been on my mind for so fucking long. At your first game vs Kas, you picked up 2 claws which together gave a total dmg boost of 21 dmg. Add the kodo effect and you had about 80 dmg as your maximum dmg. Taken into acount the BM's extreme attack rate and his crit chance you can quite easily tell that this is way too strong for being just one hero. And this happens nearly ever game (That the BM picks up claws or other dmg boosting items) and there got to be a stop to it. What I mean is: What other race can take as much use of these items as the Orcs can? The claws just favourize the Blade Master way too much and give him way too high dmg whenever he gets a crit. My proposal is either to remove claws from the map, or make them unstackable with the crit. What do you think about this? Please give me your most objective thought about this, cuz it's really bothering me and also a lot of other ppls (Mostly Undeads) as well I think.
Sincerly
Martin | 04.04.09 - 3:50 pm | #
Wow. I haven't answered an imbalance query for a long time. Not sure if I'm still good at it (I stopped thinking about it)! I prefer to be as brief as possible on this one, and I hope it can satisfy you.
You asked me to be objective, I'll try to be.
* Blademaster is extremely item dependent. This is his strength and his weakness.
* Orc's alternatives are inadequate. Farseer's wolves were increased to 30 XP gain for kills, because they were too good against Human in Reign of Chaos and Early TFT. They used to be 12 XP each. Because they got suicided on human peasants all the time. Needless to say, with arcane tower, the c hange back to 12 XP is way overdue :P This is why all races are death coiling, bolting, detonating wolves with a vengeance :) TC first and SH first are both unfeasible.
* Blademaster gets countered by Cyclone more properly than he should be, and by human's slow and bolt and breakers.
* Undead has to play smart and surprise. Sorry!
Moreover... critical strike has nothing to do with luck - it's just a skill. just like evasion and bash. Bash does 25 damage on each level per hit , and stuns for 1 second. It has 40% chance on level 3! that's almost 3x the chance that BM has for doing critical. Gloves of haste can boost an Mk's effectiveness; but Pendant of mana is even more destructive. The same item (pendant of mana) is almost useless on a blademaster. Moreover, on level 1 and 2, BM isn't that strong at all. High level heroes are stronger,yes a BM5 is strong. But do you know what a level 5 Panda can do?
Orc's heroes are maybe stronger than other race's heroes, but it doesnt mean that orc > other races. Every race has its own strengths and weakness. Orc's strength are the heroes.
ghg | 04.04.09 - 4:26 pm | #
Agree to this one (read above).
Hey Grubby,
maybe u wanna try sth like
http://www.mogulus.com/retjewith streaming your own games.. works really great!
Cheers
NoW | 04.04.09 - 5:06 pm | #
Thanks, I'll try it later!
My list of victims is fairly endless - even though I'm only level 2, I'm co
