This is a list of builds that used to be viable but no longer are effective either due to patch changes or metagame shifts. For safekeeping and posterity, we are keeping a record of them here.
Protoss vs Protoss
Protoss vs Terran
- 3 Gate Expo – As the 1/1/1 allin became more popular in early 2011, the true weakness of this build was revealed: it neither gives you a strong enough army to pressure your opponent enough to do damage nor gives you a strong enough economy to deal with a later attack. It was phased out in favor of 1gate FE and later allins.
Protoss vs Zerg
- 3 Gate Sentry Expand – No pressure could be applied to a 15 hatch zerg, and with the rise of speedling counter attacks whenever toss moves out too soon, a 3gate army is just too immobile to compete with zerg. Plus, FFE gives you a better economy and a safer front to defend.
- +1 Zealot into Fast Third – Overall it is just on out dated build that is being phased out by better, less “risky” builds, such as the 7 gate 1 gas all in. 5 zealots at the 7 minute mark isn’t game changing and with putting down such a late cyber core, other builds are far superior when executed correctly.
- Adonminus’ Macro-Aggressive Style – It’s infeasible in the current metagame to assume your opponent is not going roaches.
Terran vs Protoss
- 1/1/1 Allin – With the range buff to immortals in late 2011, 1gate FE ->5gate robo absolutely manhandles this army with proper micro.
- 1rax Reaper FE – Even if you scout a 3gate void allin with your initial reaper, due to the time commitment that building reapers cost after repeated nerfs, it is impossible to hold. Then, as the 3gate void allin became very popular in mid 2011, the reaper FE soon became an autoloss build.
Terran vs Terran
- Blue Flame Expand – With the blue flame nerf of Patch 1.4.0, blue flame hellion openers became less effective in hellion vs hellion fights than reactor hellion openers. Also, blue flame hellions could no longer deny mass marine 1rax FEs.
- 3 Tank Timing – With the rise to prominence of standard banshee openers as the default TvT build in early 2011, this push would automatically get blind countered and lose more than half the time.
Terran vs Zerg
- Reactor Hellion FE – Early roaches became increasingly popular in early 2012 – effective denying the scouting and harassment potential of early hellions in TvZ. However, with the queen range buff of mid 2012, queens could push back early hellions even off creep in order to deny scouting, harassment potential, and most importantly containment of both creep spread and zerg’s third hatch. Hellions are still somewhat used in order to take map control, but they present no threat to zerg early on anymore, so 1rax FE->hellions is much more popular.
- 1rax Reaper FE – With the repeated nerfs against reapers, reaper openers stopped being useful. The true nail in the coffin of all reaper openers for TvZ however was the queen range buff of mid 2012: queens with the same range as reapers meant that they no longer could get any harassment or even useful scouting intel without dying.
Zerg vs Protoss
- 7 Roach Rush – With the rise of 3hatch before gas becoming the standard in order to combat FFE, this build which gets gas and makes a lot of roaches instead of getting a natural became incredibly easy to scout and defend with cannons.
- Leenock’s 10 Roach Rush – With the rise of 3htach before gas becoming the standard in order to combat FFE, this build which gets gas instead of an expansion became incredibly easy to scout and defend with cannons.
Zerg vs Terran
Zerg vs Zerg