Rushes - good or bad?

I am not a rusher, I usually like to go heavy on the economy and hit very hard later on in the game with the best tech.

That said, rushing has its place. For a game to play well it needs to have a mix of strategies, that includes rushing. One thing to keep in mind though is that rushing shouldn't be a sure fire thing. It needs to be a very high risk maneuver, and there needs to be a decent way of defending against it. For me gameplay balance isn't just about the units being similar in power and usefulness. The strategies also need to be balanced. Rushing booming and turtling need to have similar risks versus rewards so that it is possible to win the game regardless of which path you take provided you do them right. They need to counter each other as well, a rush is fine, it allows you to strike quickly but it should leave you at a defensive and economic disadvantage, most games pull this off sufficiently. Booming would be weak to rushing, but the additional expansions and larger resources should give you and advantage against a turtle who hasn't expanded, a few games do this well. Finally the turtle should have strong defenses and be able to fend off a rush, of course a 100% success rate should be avoided, the weakness of course is a weakened economy, few games pull this off since most developers seem to do a bad job at defenses; in most cases they are too weak to stop a rush, and in a few they are so strong that rushing isn't viable anymore, both of these situations should be avoided. One of the reasons I don't like C&C 3 very much is that, for the most part, it is a race, and the player who rushes first wins, this is very one dimensional gameplay, an example of how it should not be done.

It is fine if different factions encourage different strategies, but the game as a whole should not encourage any one strategy, they all need to be viable for the game to be fun at all stages of the game. If rushes are too powerful then games end to quickly, if the turtles are too powerful then the game plays slowly as the players have to spend too much time teching to break the defenses. Rushes need to be viable for early game combat, turtles need to be viable so you get mid game counterattacks, and booming needs to be viable so that late game steamrolling can take place. If any one of these basic strategies isn't properly attended to then the game tends to get boring and there are lapses in the fighting. Blizzard pulled it off pretty well in Starcraft, through, so I don't think we have anything to worry about in SC2.



That might be a little long winded, but basicly rushes are not inherently good or bad, the treatment of rushes can be since somee games don't have rushes balanced properly to make rushes viable, yet not overpowered. In a well balanced game rushes should NOT be good or bad, they should just be one of the possible choices.

 

No, I don't, I am a toss player. PvZ is my best mu though.

The rest of the post wasn't directed at me was it? I know that rushes are important.

Should be, and normally are. However, there is one instance, when FE is very useful against a rush.

It is with the PvZ mu, as the toss player, you build your first pylon near your choke, if it is a map with a ramp, close to that, then you scout the zerg. If you don't find him, build a forge, if you do then it depends. You see12 hatch, build a nexus, then a forge, you see pool, build a forge, try to make the forge start warping in, when the pool is half done, so they will come at the same time. Then build two cannons or so, doing this near your nat and ramp, stops the rush cold, and gives an expansion. It is possible for this to fail of couse, however that is too much to talk about.

 

Nice strat Darky but I will post my reason for rushing latter. I massive expand but I am not stupid enough to try and rush their base with full on attack to early. I just send in a zealot or three to damage their economy and slow them down (especially against zerg as they rush early) while I build a ton of expansions (thank god for single probe expansions)

 

That's not really a rush, just early pressure. A rush would be him 5 pooling you and (ideally) not giving you time to get a forge up at all.

 

Against the Zerg, expanding a lot isn't needed, they have to stay a base a head of you to keep up.

So the strategy I talked about, they will build another base if they know what they are doing, so kill it first.

Do you want me to go into it?

If you scout him, and he has early pooled like a 6 pool, you immediatly build a forge, harrass with your scout, which you should be doing anyway (something I need to work on), and cut probes to make cannons. Also, learning to worker drill is of big importance when fighting the zerg. Make sure you block your ramp with probes too, so they can't run past.

Like these replays of mine.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=d43eecf6a248d1c1d2db6fb9a8902bda

240: This was a standard +1 zeal push, but he didn't make a third base, so I just pwned him.

219: This one I fast HTed.

218: I also fast templared on this one.

Edit: Don't quote more then you post please.

 

you can win the game through rush,that's a kind of stratagy. Nothing special.

 

Actually protoss is one of the few races that can't rush well. Since teching requires quite alot of resources, i think the Protoss player may encounter difficulty rushing unless they micro better than the opposition. Still rushing is a valid tactic. The earlier you rush, the faster you'll secure your victory. Touche.

 

Protoss I find are the best to rush with.

Zealots are already ridiculously tough from the getgo, so when you throw 4 at a mere 5 - 6 Marines...

 

By the time you had that many in a terrans base, he would have more marines, and a bunker if he was staying infantry. Or he would have vultures soon.

It's a lot better to send your first zealot in, and every zealot you do make when they come. And tech dragoons while doing it, so by the time they can fight off your zealots, you have goons to deal with the bats or the vults they brought into play.

From here it is fairly simple to go DT and pwn them.


Naturally this tactic is hard to pull off vs someone with really good micro.

 

True but I agree with darkone. And as for a Zerg base they should have around 4-5x as many @least (if focusing on unit production) so ur Zelots would be screwed.

 

Speaking of rushes, i don't know but i have to mention this because i remember it happens when it was the starcraft original, there was a tournament and it was 2v2 match you see there was a team that played both zerk and as we all know zerk rush the fast of all 3 races, so those guys where so practicing on wining the whole tour by just rushing , well they point is that they made it to finals but they lost at the end (ofc the rush did not work against skilled players). I think the other team was p and t but not sure.

 

The only thing that matters with regards to Rushing is that an effective counter other than also Rushing exists.

First off, from what I understand, Workers attack at normal speed rather than slow speed. This means that Workers are going to be significantly better at fending off early rushes.

Second off, each side can build counters to basic units relatively quickly, Marauder/Hellion for Terrans, Zealot for Protoss, and Roach/Queen for Zerg.

Third off, each side has good defensive buildings that can be obtained early.
Terrans: Bunker is obtainable with just Barracks, Planetary Fortress is obtainable with just Engineering Bay.
Zerg: Queen and Spine Crawler is obtainable with Spawning Pool
Protoss: Photon Cannon is obtainable with Forge.

Overall, it looks to me like Protoss have the least capacity for turtling. Their only real counter to an early rush is to spam Zealots themselves, as their Turret is difficult to access and neither Stalkers nor Nullifiers will do well against spammed early units. Their workers are also the most fragile in large scale battles. I suppose they have to count on their shields to discourage such hostility.

 

yea see thats wat im not likin about the toss. terr and zerg each have 3 units without gas (workers not included) while toss has one.
.....

 

Its really simple.

People they don't like the idea of "rushing"
Either
1. Do not know how to defend vs them
2. Aren't able to do it effectively themselves.

Sometimes both.

Raylito apparently does not understand that early attacking and the ability to defend against it are skills that all good players have.

You will never get good or win many games otherwise. Unless you always play on newb fort maps that prevent rushes...

so neged..

 

Blizzard have made it clear that anti-rush leagues will be around for the less skilled players. There. Everybody's happy.

 

hwangsbul or sumthin like that 0.0

 

They do make up for it by having a great economy and the ability to expand quickly due to the probe mechanics, they favor booming tactics (which are weak vs rush). Nevertheless, it is still possible to fend off a rush if you play right which is the important part. If you play vs zerg player you should be expecting a rush

 

by the time u get 2 zlots the zerg might just come at u with 12-14 zlings.
epic eco rape

of course, this is just a concept i have, prolly woudnt happened if u wall right. or if ur just that kewl

 

rushes are good in a bad way... its like a double edge sword actually.

 

Protoss suck at walling. It's just not effective against anything. Pylons are small and stuff slips by, and large buildings are to expensive. If you want to use those tactics, I recommend playing Terran.

Further, Zerg can already rush you even before you have your first Zealot out. Only on small maps, obviously. Otherwise it'll take to long for them to find you and get there with a decent force.

As for the Terran Planetary Fortress, I don't think that's the best option to stop early rushes. You would have to save up your resources, which prevents you from training Marines. If the opponent gets to you before your SCV is finished building the Fortress, you'd have nothing to defend yourself with. I think it will be most effective to get it done in time for the second wave, not the first one.