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So I have been doing my free coaching/replay analysis stream and I think a huge issue that needs to be addressed or put into perspective for people is finding the importance of every action they make in the game at their level.
About Me: + Show Spoiler +
To cut to the chase, people misuse their APM. The biggest REASON for this misuse is because people watch pro replays and streams, see the little details that win games for the pros, and then try to apply those same things to their gameplay.
Examples: 1. Microing the scout worker for harrassing mineral lines 2. Using burrowed infestors to drop infested terrans at expansions 3. banshee harrass 4. Stutter stepping units 5. Sniping creep tumors as they spawn 6. etc...
Now I know a lot of people are saying, "But a lot of those things are very good" and "I have won lots of games because of great banshee play/burrowed infestors/etc!"
If you are at a high level then I agree, those are the proper things to be doing, but if you are lower level then you have much greater things to focus your APM on.
Now of course every race is different and feel free to disagree with my uses of apm below, but I think if players keep their focus on the level of their league as I state, they will be able to improve more than if they watch pro replays and try to imitate.
I think every player should also start by looking at my bronze level suggestions then moving up 1 league at a time and making sure they have everything before continuing on. I know someone who made it to platinum because he is amazing at winning games with banshees, but he cannot move past plat because as soon as he started playing people who defended well against banshees, he still had the skills of a silver player in terms of macro and it crippled him.
Here is my list of where each league level player should focus their actions/attention:
Bronze/Silver + Show Spoiler +Basics:+ Show Spoiler +-There is no reason for scouting at this level (if you are a zerg player check your section on this). Strong macro should win out 90% of the time regardless of what your opponent is doing. -Always build workers. Always. -Keep your eyes in your base 95% of the time or more. If you ever watch a replay, you will see your macro fails when you are not looking at your base. Wait until you are a higher level before diverting your attention. -You should be able to A-move any army if you have good macro and win the game at this level. Thus, do not worry about tiny attacks or drops or timing windows. Simply macro up a large army, and A move to his base. Race specific:+ Show Spoiler +Terran:+ Show Spoiler +-Hotkey your whole army to 1 hotkey, your CCs to 1 hotkey, and your Barracks to 1 hotkey. -Always make sure you have scvs and marines building. -Take an expansion by 5:00 (you can start it in your base if you don't feel safe). -Build additional supply depots (before you even really feel you need them, it's okay to have too much supply at this point). -If you have any extra minerals, make more barracks (and orbitals in your base for mules/scvs!). Even if you are on 2 base and have 6 barracks already, if you are floating 2K minerals feel free to drop down 5-6 more! -You do not need to tech. You honestly can do without gas even but if you must get it I'd suggest getting it delayed and then just using it for Reactors/tech labs to get additional marines and marauders. TVT - 10 depot, 12 barracks, 14 depot, 15/16 orbital, 15 marine, 16 marine, 17 command center (can be inbase if you don't feel safe), 18 bunker at natural, add 2 more barracks after bunker complete. TVZ - same as TVT TVP - same as TVT Zerg:+ Show Spoiler +-At this level if you have good macro you can win with purely queens and drones (many pros have done this to prove the point that I'm trying to make in this thread). I would like you to make units still but the point is that it is possible to win without them. -When I said no scouting, that mostly referred to protoss and terran not needing to scout at all because they are more defensive and build units more constantly. Since zerg is different and reactionary, I think it's important to simply have a very basic scout of when they are moving out. Don't care if they are teching like crazy in their base or whatever, you should have safe builds to prepare for that stuff (evo chamber at 5:30, spore at each base, etc). Simply have a ling outside their ramp or at their tower to know when they are pushing out. This will be useful for when to transition into making more units/spines. -Put all hatcheries on one hotkey. Whenever you are sitting there, be pressing the hatchery hotkey, then S. This selects your larvae so you can spend them immediately. -For every wave of units that you build, make an overlord. EX: If I have 8 larvae, I hit "4" (My Hatcheries hotkey), "s" (Selects larvae), "V" (builds an overlord), then "d" 7 times (builds 7 drones). If you get in this habit you will find yourself getting supply blocked at least 50% less if not better. -Make 4x queens or more (good anti air) -Do not be afraid to drone. If you drone a lot, just make more queens and some spine crawlers to defend. -Do not use infestors. Too much apm required and it will hurt you elsewhere. -Your mineral dump will be additional hatcheries and queens. If you are on 2-3 base and have 3K minerals, make 3 more macro hatcheries inside your main. This will allow you to get more larva, make more queens, and spend all that extra money. Just make sure to add them to your hatcheries hotkey! -Only send out your first overlord to scout. All other ones leave in your base or the airspace right around it. -Make only lings and roaches. ZVX - On 9 build your overlord, not 10. ZVT - Open 15 hatch, 15 gas, 15 pool, 15 overlord. 2x queen when pool completes, speed at at next 100min/100gas. ZVZ - Open 14 gas, 14 pool, 15 overlord. On pool finish get ling speed, a queen, and 4 lings. at 21 supply, take your natural hatchery. ZVP - Same as ZvZ Protoss:+ Show Spoiler +-Hotkey entire army to 1. Make only zealots and stalkers unless playing PvP in which case immortals are allowed. If you wish to make sentries to get used to them, only use them defensively. You do not want to be worrying about army micro and spellcasting yet outside of your base because your macro will slip. -Always make sure you have probes building and have used your warp in cycles. Do not cut probes at this level, wait until you get higher up. -Whenever you warp in units, grab a probe and throw down 1-2 pylons. -Use chronoboost on anything, as long as it is being used. -Your mineral dump is going to be gateways. Just make additional gateways whenever you have lots of extra resources. -You do not need to tech to anything really. Large gateway armies are very strong. When you attack just A-move your massive army towards his base. PVT - 9 pylon, 13 gateway, 15 assimilator, 16 pylon, 18 cyber, 19 zealot, 22 pylon, 23 stalker, warpgate when cyber done, 26 gateway, 30 pylon, 30 gateway PVZ - Same as PVT PVP - Same as PVT but add a 2nd assimilator at 25 and a Robotics facility at 31. PVX - Expand with the next 400 minerals after you complete these builds. Your army should be strong enough to hold it.
Gold + Show Spoiler +Basics:+ Show Spoiler +-Once you reach gold I think it is acceptable to start basic scouting and moving into some tech. While you can still probably win with just a basic army, having a higher level unit in your army will benefit you here as long as you are still spending all of your resources. -What I mean by basic scouting: Send a worker to find your opponents base (around 12-14 supply). Look to see if they have either gas in their main, and then hide your worker at their expansion to see if they expand (so the far side of the ramp). You will not really use the information too much right now, but it's a good habit to just check these basic things. Do not harrass the mineral line, don't keep running around inside the base, just get in to check gas and get out (then put your focus back on your base). The only time I'd say be alarmed is if you get in his base and don't see any barracks/gateways/pylons or see a 6 pool. Then I would recommend getting units out a little faster and/or walling off your ramp depending on the m/u. Other than that, just get in the habit of having that scout worker move out but that is it. XVX - For match ups at this level I think it's okay for you to find a build that you like. I'd recommend it be more macro-oriented though as that is how you will improve faster. An example is opening Forge fast expand in Pvz instead of 3gate expand. -You want to be hitting around 70+ workers by the later part of the game on 3 bases. If you watch replays and see yourself topping off at like 40-60 workers, you know what you need to work on. -Keep your eyes in your base 90% of the time or more. You can start to look around a tiny bit but still do not worry about harrassing Race Specific:+ Show Spoiler +Terran:+ Show Spoiler +-Once you get down 3 racks and your expansion, start adding refineries. Build a factory and a starport to start adding more units to your army. Do not get any unit for harrass, just a unit to add to your army for more damage/tankability/versatility. -Start adding tech labs and reactors to all your production facilities. You can get basic upgrades (stim, combat shields, conc shells) and possibly a +1/+1 on your engineering bay if you find yourself with extra money. Do not try and get early upgrades though as you may end up cutting workers/units for it. At this point you still want to have workers and units come first, followed by upgrades after. -Notice you will start needing to grab a couple more refineries, but do not get them too early or you will be behind on minerals. Minerals are your #1 priority right now. Zerg:+ Show Spoiler +-Adding a lair before 9:00 is something to think about now. However, do not use it for infestors or mutas yet. Both of those units require too much micro at this time and you will take away from your macro if you want to use them. Instead, upgrade to lair to start building the habit as well as for getting overseers incase of cloaked units. -Since you're getting lair, you can also get +2/+2 here as the game goes on and you have resources. -Start overlord spreading in this match up. Don't worry about covering everything or seeing everything with them ,just try to send them out along the outskirts of the map so they won't get sniped and it will be a good habit for later. -I'd recommend still only making lings and roaches. If you have them in mass quickly, they are quite effective. The only time I'd say get anything else is if they have air (banshees, voids), in which case grab some hydras. -Will need a couple more gas but not too much as minerals are still your priority (queens, lings, roaches (cheap on gas)) Protoss+ Show Spoiler +-Tech up to Collosus once you have your 2 bases. Once again, do not cut workers or units to get this tech, simply throw it in when you start to get extra resources. -For the protoss army you are going to start to need more gas (more than the other races) so when you expand and have more probes, start to get up to 4 assimilators. -Add forges on after you expand and start getting +1/+1 upgrades. If the game moves later, I'd say feel free to get a twilight so you can get +2/+2 and charge, but do not worry about getting blink. At this level we still want to avoid unit micro situations. -Sentries would also be good to start using now. Get used to forcefields and guardian shield right now but be careful to not waste all of your gas on sentries right now.
Platinum + Show Spoiler +Basics:+ Show Spoiler +-At platinum level I think you still shouldn't focus on doing anything more in terms of scouting besides the basic scouting described before. The reason for this is from 1. experience and 2. there are better things to work on right now than identifying your opponents build. You still need to worry about yourself first. -1 base all ins will start to hit a lot harder now so I'd suggest putting a little more notice on if your opponent expands or not. If he does not expand for a decent amount of time after you, start to get worried and play a little more defensively (since you are ahead now). -I think platinum is the best place to start worrying about unit control. Anything below this league should focus on the production of units and workers but once you get those skills down you can start looking at your army. -This league will also be a good time to start transitioning from always looking at your base, to learning how to really use hotkeys effectively when you are away from base. -Keep your eyes on your base about 60% of the time here. -Start using more than 1 hotkey for your army now. main army on one, spellcasters on another. Race Specific:+ Show Spoiler +Terran:+ Show Spoiler +-I think this is a great time to start thinking about drops as a terran player. You are now at the point where you want to add a couple of things to your opponents plate so he starts to slip in his macro. Drops is a great way to do this and it takes little effort on your part. NOTE: Do not micro these drops too much. Just send a dropship behind a mineral line and tell it to drop there (all in a shift command so you don't have to go back and watch to drop). Once units are dropped, you can push over to stim and attack move but I wouldn't worry too much more beyond that. - In TvZ start pushing up to creep, then sieging and slowly pushing forward. This is going to take a lot of focus outside off your macro so you really have to watch for slips in scv/unit production here. - Add vikings in TvP when you scout collosus. Don't worry about the exact number, just make vikings so you can be sure you will kill his collosus (generally 2:1 ratio of vikings to collosus) -Adding more gases at this level is also a good idea since you are going to be adding more upgrades and more units like medivacs and vikings. -I think this is also a good league to start using scans for scout information a little later on. Around the time they'd be getting a spire or templar tech or collosus, drop a scan and check out their base to see what's going on. -Also adding ghosts around now could be a good idea to practice EMP and snipe. Zerg:+ Show Spoiler +-I'd say platinum league should be the first time that you really touch infestors and mutalisks. They are both extremely fragile and time consuming so you want to make sure you are doing everything right elsewhere before you start using these units. -For mutalisks, you are going to start wanting to worry about your gas timings more now. When you invest in a spire you are going to want to have 4 extractors or more going so you have to make sure you droned properly beforehand. You also are going to want to make sure you have enough overlord room (have 30-40 extra supply) and resources stockpiled so you can make 10-15 mutalisks right when your spire pops. They are best when they are a surprise. Use mutalisks to do a little harrass on worker lines but do not slip on your macro and be careful where you leave your mutas. They also do not engage the best against an open field army so usually you want to use them to just contain your opponent and pick off things like tanks. -For infestors I don't think you should be offensive/harrassing with these units yet. Mostly because they do not have the best getaway and it's not worth the risk of losing them all right now (nor the focus they require). I'd say keep them with your army and just use them to fungal up in big battles. -Think about positioning now for engagements. If you can get a swarm on an army from multiple sides you will do MUCH more damage. -Some scouting for army composition is also going to start being important here as follows: ZVT: Is he going bio or mech? bio you can get more ling bling, mech you want more roaches generally ZVZ: Is he getting mutas? hydras and infestors + some spores ZVP: does he have collosus? Get corrupters Protoss:+ Show Spoiler +-I think platinum is when you should start looking at some more tech and units. -Blink - I wouldn't recommend using blink on a stalker by stalker basis right now as you will spend all your time at your units and forget to macro/warp in, but I think blink as a whole is effective at this level as you can use it for blinking up/down cliffs and chasing units. -HTs/storm - In earlier leagues I don't promote the idea of templar as much because they are fragile and require a little more unit micro. -Start being proactive with your observer now to check out your opponents unit composition and how many expansions they have. Don't worry about moving it all around, just have it follow their army or sit at their next expo. -Practice using Forcefields more when you're out engaging an army. This is good time to figure out the best ways to trap their armies.
Diamond + Show Spoiler +Basics:+ Show Spoiler +-In Diamond I think you should be at the point where you can make it to late game effectively (with decent macro) and thus you need to start working on getting a solid late game army. -Consider adding multipronged attacks/counter attacks in on this level. This is now where we want to be spending more of our time out with our army and less time in our base. -Start worrying about actually getting more information from scouting now. If you want to make it into masters, you are going to need to know what your opponent is doing so you can plan accordingly -Start becoming really aware of map control. If you can keep good vision for yourself and your opponent in the dark you will be in an advantageous position and can react better. Race Specific:+ Show Spoiler +Terran:+ Show Spoiler +-Be more concrete with your timings of buildings because now you are going to want to hit certain windows. Scout a zerg building a spire? Probably a good time to hit because he is going to be saving up money + he just invested in tech. Hitting before a protoss can get X collosus can also be strong. -Start to learn more stutter stepping and marine splitting techniques and practice these. -Focus on your drops more. Try to pick off important tech and pick up when they come to defend so you can go back in for another drop after. Zerg:+ Show Spoiler +-Creep spread is going to start becoming a bigger factor here. Make sure you are connecting all of your bases and vs terran/protoss make sure you can spread it out as far as possible for a nice surround. -Make sure you are scouting in with an overlord at the appropriate time based on the match up. Look for a spire/lair/inf pit in zvz, mech or bio in zvt, and the tech path in zvp (double robo, collo, stargate, DT's, etc). -Deny expansions. Whether it is from an overlord dropping creep, to a burrowed zergling, to simply having a pack of units to run in and snipe the expo when it goes down, make sure you don't just give away free expansions. -Focus on where your units are out on the map. You need map control as a zerg player and having units ready to surround/counter an army will help move you up Protoss:+ Show Spoiler +-Work on timing pushes. In PvZ alone there are so many good 2 base timings you can hit that either go all in for massive damage, or allow you to expand behind them. -In pvp look for positioning. Your opponents will have better macro and thus your armies will be more equal in size. Make sure you get the good surround as opposed to getting caught trying to push up a ramp or in some other terrible position. -Work on building placement as it is very critical. If you're against a zerg make sure you have good walls and cannons in tough to hit places. If you are playing terran be careful about leaving important tech in places that are easy to snipe with drops. Even things like pylons are important because they can provide base vision as well as key places for warp ins. -Start to look for late game harrass options. DTs, Warp Prisms, etc are all good ideas and can catch a lot of players off guard due to the usual lack of harrassment from protoss players.
Masters + Show Spoiler +Basics:+ Show Spoiler +-Really focus on all of the small details now. Games at this level are won and lost from the small things such as pulling off/putting on gas, units popping out at the exactly right time to defend/attack, pushes hitting on time (20 seconds later and you may lose instead of win), pulling workers to help defend, etc.. -I don't think race specifics are necessary for this because if you're in masters you probably have a good idea of the game and just need to continue working on the smaller details that you DO see pros doing. Things like burrowed banes, infestors spewing infested terrans at expansions, triple drops, warp prism harass, tech transitions, and more are all things to think about and can be game changing. The biggest thing to remember though is to not forget everything from before. Focus on the little things but make sure you have the big things down or you may find yourself in trouble. -My biggest advice for Masters players is to learn the other races. Learn what the other races HATE to deal with and abuse it. Also learn their timings and you can hit around them/counter them/defend them.
-I'd like to point out that I put down a lot more in every league besides masters. This is because I feel Masters League has way too many small details to cover and there are way too many builds that involve proper working cuts and such and it would simply take far too long to describe every tiny detail.
Additional Notes from comments: + Show Spoiler +Turtling Opponent:+ Show Spoiler +If you find your opponent is mega turtled, don't be afraid to just sit back a bit and macro up more. Start adding stationary defenses (cannons, turrets, spines/spores) all over your bases and continue to expand so that he can't just drop you and catch you panicking. Instead, you will start to really accumulate a lot more money off of more bases and with this you can continue to add on more production facilities and maybe start working in more upgrades/tech. Eventually he is going to have to come out and then you can trade armies with him and remax much faster and stronger than he can.
There's a nice saying in starcraft: Whenever you're ahead, get further ahead.
Sure it's nice to know exactly when you can push to win and etc, but there's really nothing wrong with simply furthering your lead to put you in an even better position.
Discussion is always welcome.
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I agree that over micro-ing can hurt some players, but imo its far to complicated and differs too much to put do's and dont's on it. I.e. Sometimes stutter stepping your units will win you the game straight away, other times its better to focus on macro during that time.
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On June 09 2012 07:32 mskaa wrote: I agree that over micro-ing can hurt some players, but imo its far to complicated and differs too much to put do's and dont's on it. I.e. Sometimes stutter stepping your units will win you the game straight away, other times its better to focus on macro during that time.
I'm not saying that stutter stepping won't win you a game. There are plenty of little things (like having great banshee harass) that can win you games. I'm saying there are bigger things to focus on though.
If I haven't mastered my macro before I start focusing on stutter stepping marines, I end up with situations like this:
Situation 1: stutter stepping 20 marines and changing a losing engagement to a win
Situation 2: having focused on macro all game and having 35 marines not stutter stepped to win easily.
Now pretend that neither of those engagements win and they both somehow do the same amount of damage. In situation 1 you will have been focusing on stutter stepping and let your macro slip some. In situation 2 you will have not let it slip and thus be ahead.
This continues for every engagement everywhere. So if you have 25 engagements throughout a game (big or small) and are focusing on the stutter, you will fall further and further behind the guy who didn't stutter (and thus can have more units in the next engagement).
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As a high level player I agree that the first things you mention should not be done by low APM players. I will say that players at all skill levels should first and foremost ALWAYS BE BUILDING STUFF. you can easily get through plat that way and then branch off. Biggest tip I ever learned was not to look at your army, their are more important things to do like building $hit. That said, keep doing what you do if you win, and adjust if you start losing, this is how to get better...
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I generally agree with what you said, it's a very realistic and well detailed post in my opinion. There are a couple of things I would add or I don't really agree with tho, as Protoss player. First I think a P player should start to get comfortable with sentries and force fields at silver level. I say this from experience, I hit a very hard brick wall in Silver because I didn't use sentries at all, and before I started to learn how to use them and force myself to produce 2-3 in the early game I used to get totally devastated by Terrans. It also helps a lot making PvZ easier. You obviously don't need to focus too much on exploiting the surroundings to create choke points etc, since you won't have the experience nor the map knowledge, but knowing that you can use a couple of FF to thwart those very irritating T 1 base pushes is very important imho.
The second thing is more like something I would add: observers!!! If you need them, make them! You don't really get how important observers are by watching pro players vods, because you usually won't see how many he made and where he placed them. At low levels it's so very common to get annihilated because that enemy army just came out of nowhere while you were distracted for half a second. If you struggle to have map control or find yourself unable to identify where your enemy is... make OBSERVERS! As llama said, you don't need that robo facility to continually crank out colossi at low levels. Place one obs just outside your enemy's natural expansion, so you don't risk it getting spotted and you can see when his army moves out. Place one somewhere in the middle of the map, maybe on patrol, so you can see when the army is getting close. If you have trouble defending against drops, place one along the most obvious drop-route, far away from your base, so you can identify an incoming drop and warp in units to defend with ease. Observers are vastly underrated, you don't need them just to hover on your enemy's base to identify his build (obviously it's still a great plus), you can very well use them to gain a lot more of information. Of course the ideal situation would be to use as few of them as possible, but if you are in a low league there's really nothing wrong with making one or two or even three observers more than usual, if that helps keeping you safe and sound.
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One thing I think you should add to the Terran's section of diamond/platinum is to never hold down unit production keys. Soo many times in a battle I end up spamming D and not having any money for marines.
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GOOD write up! Although putting units on 2 different hotkeys should have started before platinum. High gold is where you shoul use two hotkeys.
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This would be true if skill in Sc2 was a set thing, however to improve you have to push yourself, that is the basic rule in any sport, whether it is soccer, weightlifting or starcraft. Saying to a young soccer player, dont learn how to dribble well, at your level speed is all that matters, work on that, is simply bad advice. Doing this micro little tricks at first do hurt your overall game. However as you improve you learn how to do these things AND macro, and this is where repetition and practice to come in to improve your skill. I see your point that you don't want the bronze player wasting their apm scouting with their probe while they have 5 probes sitting idle in their main, but thats just common sense, and not really anything revolutionary.
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Hmm i just want to make one comment about players stream on the whole i agree with you prioritising actions is a really important and hard skill to master but some players have such an effective apm that just watching, like literally just watching and then playing, u will build good habits in ur subconscient and then play better. Like its quite minimal but thats the way i feel when watching Mvp or MKP first person, so id recommend watching incredibly smooth and efficients players to understand what the op is about and just improve in general
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On June 09 2012 08:26 Dontkillme wrote: GOOD write up! Although putting units on 2 different hotkeys should have started before platinum. High gold is where you shoul use two hotkeys.
Actually no its kinda up to your preferences, and id go as far as saying that in a lot of case u want to hotkeys everything on 1 hotkey. example: marine tank. put all on ctrl group 1 and u can move super fast on the map, change screens easily. and the way to not lose any micro ability is by having ur tanks on 2, so that if u see a blip on the minimap or want to target fire, u can instant siege without tabbing. great players who do that are kas and forgg, mkp and mvp dont even bother with that and just a lol... So no less hotkey=easier game= easier actions to perform= more potential actions. now im not saying u should always just 1a, like i hate having air units with grounds, ghosts with rest of bio etc, but its something u should look into if u want to maximise efficiency
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Thanks, this is quite helpful (Platinum Zerg here).
One comment on your Platinum section:
-I think diamond is the best place to start worrying about unit control. Anything below this league should focus on the production of units and workers but once you get those skills down you can start looking at your army.
This suggests we should not be worrying about unit control in Platinum...
I'd say keep them with your army and just use them to fungal up in big battles <...> -Think about positioning now for engagements. If you can get a swarm on an army from multiple sides you will do MUCH more damage.
...which seems to be contradicted by these sections. I find that fungals require quite a lot of attention to unit control on my part (I still suck at them and miss a lot). Flanks require even more attention, since I find it difficult to ensure everything arrives at the same time. If my flank groups arrive at different times I often lose my entire army for little return, especially against Terran who can wipe out an unsupported flank group in a matter of seconds. I more or less gave up doing this against Terran since it seemed like the margin for error was so small and any mistake would lose me the game outright, and my macro usually goes to crap while I am attempting it. Having said that my ZvT record right now is awful, so perhaps I do need to figure this out. I'm just not sure how to do it without worrying about unit control.
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i dont know if maybe the gold/plat zerg advice is wierd because usa is diff to eu server but i find the advice strange.. (only gold top8 EU atm)
adversity to mutas: yes they are micro intensive but for the apm i put in a protoss needs to use some to defend them. The pressure of them helps discourage the protoss moving out helping you further your tech/upgrades. if they cant deal with it well.. or weren't going stalkers you can do really nice damage easily (punish immo sentry heavy pushes)
adversity to infestors: obviously they cant attack making them a bit risky to rely on but consider this.. run 1/2 lings at an expo.. see no cannon.. run 1-4 burrowed infestors in and hold shift, press T and spam click then still holding shift right click back to mid/yourbase.. you have easy damage forcing a reaction from them. Once practised you can set this up in like 2 seconds and do it just after a round of injects or something so im barely losing anything and if the protoss is out of position or doesnt react well they could lose the expo let alone a lot of workers for just energy.
Only ling roach: unless you're planning on allin every game i dont understand this. infestors are superb at aoe damage useful in every matchup (perhaps most zvzs this level dont reach that). If a protoss sees only roachling and builds right or a terran doesnt get caught unsieged it just seems unlikely you can trade with these past 10minutes. (also without muta/inf how you deal with drops?)
scouting P seems light: does he have colly... i would replace with 9scout on the 1v1maps. pylon highground = gateopening expect pressure. See pylon lowground = FFE can go more eco (3base no gas anyone?:D ) , watch for natural gas, expect 2base push usually.
some other more general thoughts: -idea of shift clicking to allow you to do more things easier (obviously dangerous in some situations but in most it can help LOADS.. shiftclicking drones, sorting drops, focusing prio targets, pathing a scout early when you have less to do anyway, etc - A-moving is all well and good but sometimes micro'ing/focus firing is necessary.. banes through a group of marines instead of amove.. mutas picking tanks... picking off either sentries/immortals in zvp.. lingbane v lingbane in zvz control can't wait til diamond imo. I understand i dont have the apm to do everything but there comes a time when making stuff 5seconds later is worth it if you lose 30 less supply in a fight because of the micro
TL;DR = i think you underestimate what people are capable of. I understand the "don't run before you can walk" but i think even gold nubs like me could surprise you playing against plats and diamonds with macro builds and the more relaxed ladder now. Sometimes i think you gotta push the babybird outa the nest to see it can fly
This is from a *much* lower skilled player's perspective so im open to the idea i'll get slated and people may disagree but i feel if i played along the guidelines provided i would be a lot worse and some of my greatest games wouldn't have been possible if i wasn't trying to stretch myself.
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I believe you have captured the essence of each league, well done
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Been stagnating in Plat for a while now. I know I'm bad, but forget just how bad I am, and guides like these help me remember what to prioritize.
It's funny, I was looking at some of my replays and I'm now usually somewhere around 100 apm, and I think of how the pros are doing literally at least twice as much as me. This helps to focus on what to improve on, I think just solid, macro play is my weakest skill as a player. Thanks for taking the time to write this.
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What I've noticed about pros vs highish master players, is that the pro will do ANYTHING to get ahead of you because they have the insane micro/multitasking capability. Yes high master players will do stuff like micro a stalker for 30 seconds against slow zerglings targetting down the hurt ones.. but he will probably not execute his build's timings perfectly back at home. a korean pro however, will execute his build timings perfectly while microing.
And about lower level players, it's so true that they bank way too much money cause their trying to do micro/though intensive things that they watch pros do. When I play on my off race account (diamond-lowmid master) my opponent will always start banking 1000-3000+ minerals when stuff starts getting crazy. Part of that is having the game sense to make sure you have the right amount of production to keep up with new econ tho.
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On June 09 2012 08:08 RehnFreemark wrote: I generally agree with what you said, it's a very realistic and well detailed post in my opinion. There are a couple of things I would add or I don't really agree with tho, as Protoss player. First I think a P player should start to get comfortable with sentries and force fields at silver level. I say this from experience, I hit a very hard brick wall in Silver because I didn't use sentries at all, and before I started to learn how to use them and force myself to produce 2-3 in the early game I used to get totally devastated by Terrans. It also helps a lot making PvZ easier. You obviously don't need to focus too much on exploiting the surroundings to create choke points etc, since you won't have the experience nor the map knowledge, but knowing that you can use a couple of FF to thwart those very irritating T 1 base pushes is very important imho.
I think I'll add this to Silver and just make a note to use them defensively so you can at least get used to using them. The big point that I want to make though at that level is that you shouldn't have to watch your army 1 bit. You can literally just a-move and this is important because you can focus back home. The second you start trying to drop down forcefields and micro units, your macro slips and there goes all that we're working towards.
On June 09 2012 08:26 Dontkillme wrote: GOOD write up! Although putting units on 2 different hotkeys should have started before platinum. High gold is where you shoul use two hotkeys.
High gold -> platinum is very similar so if you feel comfortable using the 2 hotkeys than you can. The point of keeping them on one hotkey though at that time is because I don't want you to focus on your army still very much. The second that you add all these army hotkeys, you are going to be looking at your army more and focusing more on them which is less on macro.
On June 09 2012 08:35 PlacidPanda wrote: This would be true if skill in Sc2 was a set thing, however to improve you have to push yourself, that is the basic rule in any sport, whether it is soccer, weightlifting or starcraft. Saying to a young soccer player, dont learn how to dribble well, at your level speed is all that matters, work on that, is simply bad advice. Doing this micro little tricks at first do hurt your overall game. However as you improve you learn how to do these things AND macro, and this is where repetition and practice to come in to improve your skill. I see your point that you don't want the bronze player wasting their apm scouting with their probe while they have 5 probes sitting idle in their main, but thats just common sense, and not really anything revolutionary.
I don't think this is revolutionary, but I think it is a good reminder to the players. You can't really compare it with soccer because they're too different. If you wanted to compare it, compare it with chess. You should learn openers before you try and learn some late game move that will checkmate your opponent 1/100 games when the pieces fall into the right spots.
Even that example is poor because I'm trying to say where to focus your apm. My apm is around 150+ while a typical bronze player is probably around 20-30. Thus while I have extra apm to spare for my army, they don't and so they should focus on the main stuff, get the muscle memory/mind memory down which allows them to do it faster, then start to focus on the less important things like stutter steps and such.
On June 09 2012 08:54 CtrlShiftAltGrrrrrrr wrote: Hmm i just want to make one comment about players stream on the whole i agree with you prioritising actions is a really important and hard skill to master but some players have such an effective apm that just watching, like literally just watching and then playing, u will build good habits in ur subconscient and then play better. Like its quite minimal but thats the way i feel when watching Mvp or MKP first person, so id recommend watching incredibly smooth and efficients players to understand what the op is about and just improve in general
Sure I think this can be good too, but I think it's unrealistic to think we can understand their process. If I watch an international chess player everyday, I'm not going to be as good as a kid who never watches and instead just practices openers and such from a basic chess guide book. Professionals are thinking so many steps ahead and of so many various factors (maps, metagaming, etc) that we may pick up bad habits because we assume too many things. Still, it can be good to watch streams somewhat but I think trying to imitate them is what really hurts.
On June 09 2012 09:06 Chutoro wrote:Thanks, this is quite helpful (Platinum Zerg here). One comment on your Platinum section: + Show Spoiler +-I think diamond is the best place to start worrying about unit control. Anything below this league should focus on the production of units and workers but once you get those skills down you can start looking at your army. This suggests we should not be worrying about unit control in Platinum... I'd say keep them with your army and just use them to fungal up in big battles <...> -Think about positioning now for engagements. If you can get a swarm on an army from multiple sides you will do MUCH more damage. ...which seems to be contradicted by these sections. I find that fungals require quite a lot of attention to unit control on my part (I still suck at them and miss a lot). Flanks require even more attention, since I find it difficult to ensure everything arrives at the same time. If my flank groups arrive at different times I often lose my entire army for little return, especially against Terran who can wipe out an unsupported flank group in a matter of seconds. I more or less gave up doing this against Terran since it seemed like the margin for error was so small and any mistake would lose me the game outright, and my macro usually goes to crap while I am attempting it. Having said that my ZvT record right now is awful, so perhaps I do need to figure this out. I'm just not sure how to do it without worrying about unit control.
1. I'll make that change. Accidentally had a typo in there. I think for the infestors I'm going to simply put having them there for fungal growth in an engagement. Just so you can get used to casting it. I think it's important to start looking at your army a bit now and so if you have 1 spellcaster with 1 spell that you are going to use, it is a good start.
2. In ZvT you are going to want to figure out how to engage. A big thing I'd suggest for you is to have better map control so you can flank his army when it's en route BEFORE it's seiged up and at your creep. If you do this, you will win a lot more of the battles.
On June 09 2012 10:11 RaZeKai wrote:I believe you have captured the essence of each league, well done
Thank you
On June 09 2012 10:35 BoondockSnake wrote: Been stagnating in Plat for a while now. I know I'm bad, but forget just how bad I am, and guides like these help me remember what to prioritize.
It's funny, I was looking at some of my replays and I'm now usually somewhere around 100 apm, and I think of how the pros are doing literally at least twice as much as me. This helps to focus on what to improve on, I think just solid, macro play is my weakest skill as a player. Thanks for taking the time to write this.
Glad I could help. Prioritizing is definitely a big key and if we just keep it in mind I think we can improve a lot.
On June 09 2012 10:53 -Exalt- wrote: What I've noticed about pros vs highish master players, is that the pro will do ANYTHING to get ahead of you because they have the insane micro/multitasking capability. Yes high master players will do stuff like micro a stalker for 30 seconds against slow zerglings targetting down the hurt ones.. but he will probably not execute his build's timings perfectly back at home. a korean pro however, will execute his build timings perfectly while microing.
And about lower level players, it's so true that they bank way too much money cause their trying to do micro/though intensive things that they watch pros do. When I play on my off race account (diamond-lowmid master) my opponent will always start banking 1000-3000+ minerals when stuff starts getting crazy. Part of that is having the game sense to make sure you have the right amount of production to keep up with new econ tho.
Exactly my point. If that pro is going to mineral harass, he won't miss a beat back home. Yet I've seen even masters players who spend time trying to harass me and wind up throwing down their nexus 150 minerals late. All they've done is put themselves behind at that point.
On June 09 2012 09:38 shaun3h wrote:+ Show Spoiler +i dont know if maybe the gold/plat zerg advice is wierd because usa is diff to eu server but i find the advice strange.. (only gold top8 EU atm) adversity to mutas: yes they are micro intensive but for the apm i put in a protoss needs to use some to defend them. The pressure of them helps discourage the protoss moving out helping you further your tech/upgrades. if they cant deal with it well.. or weren't going stalkers you can do really nice damage easily (punish immo sentry heavy pushes) adversity to infestors: obviously they cant attack making them a bit risky to rely on but consider this.. run 1/2 lings at an expo.. see no cannon.. run 1-4 burrowed infestors in and hold shift, press T and spam click then still holding shift right click back to mid/yourbase.. you have easy damage forcing a reaction from them. Once practised you can set this up in like 2 seconds and do it just after a round of injects or something so im barely losing anything and if the protoss is out of position or doesnt react well they could lose the expo let alone a lot of workers for just energy. Only ling roach: unless you're planning on allin every game i dont understand this. infestors are superb at aoe damage useful in every matchup (perhaps most zvzs this level dont reach that). If a protoss sees only roachling and builds right or a terran doesnt get caught unsieged it just seems unlikely you can trade with these past 10minutes. (also without muta/inf how you deal with drops?) scouting P seems light: does he have colly... i would replace with 9scout on the 1v1maps. pylon highground = gateopening expect pressure. See pylon lowground = FFE can go more eco (3base no gas anyone?:D ) , watch for natural gas, expect 2base push usually. some other more general thoughts: -idea of shift clicking to allow you to do more things easier (obviously dangerous in some situations but in most it can help LOADS.. shiftclicking drones, sorting drops, focusing prio targets, pathing a scout early when you have less to do anyway, etc - A-moving is all well and good but sometimes micro'ing/focus firing is necessary.. banes through a group of marines instead of amove.. mutas picking tanks... picking off either sentries/immortals in zvp.. lingbane v lingbane in zvz control can't wait til diamond imo. I understand i dont have the apm to do everything but there comes a time when making stuff 5seconds later is worth it if you lose 30 less supply in a fight because of the micro TL;DR = i think you underestimate what people are capable of. I understand the "don't run before you can walk" but i think even gold nubs like me could surprise you playing against plats and diamonds with macro builds and the more relaxed ladder now. Sometimes i think you gotta push the babybird outa the nest to see it can fly This is from a *much* lower skilled player's perspective so im open to the idea i'll get slated and people may disagree but i feel if i played along the guidelines provided i would be a lot worse and some of my greatest games wouldn't have been possible if i wasn't trying to stretch myself.
To your points: You are looking beyond your current level. "adversity to mutas: yes they are micro intensive but for the apm i put in a protoss needs to use some to defend them." This is true, but this is exactly the point of the banshees I was making. You are not helping yourself anywhere but in that specific game by sacrificing APM to make your opponent sacrifice his APM. Eventually you run into players who don't slip in their macro when defending against your mutas, and then you're left in a position where your macro capabilities are below that of your league and it becomes ever harder to move up.
You also talk about scouting on 9 to look for gate expand or FFE, watching natural gas, managing 3 bases, expecting 2 base pushes, using ling runbys, using burrowed infestors, etc etc etc...
You are talking like you are a Masters player and if you honestly could do all of this then why are you only gold? The most likely reason is because if you are trying to do all of this, then you aren't hitting any real macro benchmarks. If you watch a game that I play and then compare it to a game that you play (assuming you do all of these things), you'll see that while we both have that unit micro, I have twice as much stuff as you do and twice the APM so I can afford to move on to more advanced techniques.
If you're going to use running as an example, think of it like this.
bronze - walk silver - light jog gold - jog platinum - run diamond - highschool team masters - college team grandmasters - olympic team
You don't make a person who goes out for a 1 mile jog every morning do a college athletes track work out. It's unreasonable and they will fail. College athletes have trained for years and their bodies are conditioned for those workouts.
Same idea, you have to condition your mind and that doesn't happen by killing yourself with workouts you can't finish, it happens by slowly improving and building it up.
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I was talking from a mechanical standpoint. and if ur around gm level u should be able to understand whats going on, and understand what u dont understand, and try to figure it out. but ofc it doesnt replace practice
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One of these days, I want people to see me and say, "that guy represents the essence of diamond league."
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u bring up something great. I think this is something higher players always look back and realize dam i wasted so many games trying to micro. Agressive microing and tactics ect. should come after u have stabilized and are on the same economy as your opponent.
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As a silver level player I must say this is a single most useful thread I have seen in this forum ever and I read most of them
Despite the discussion which is welcomed, it shows something which I didn't figure out myself until recently (and not without a huge help of someone else, Hi Lennox
People tend to forget that you have to learn waking before you run and thank you for reminding us this. I agree it is very detrimental to try to do all the fancy things you see pros do. And you try...
Back to basics...
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I really like this post, I am a Platinum Zerg. It looks like there are a lot of things I can start working on.
I have 1 question, what can I do to try and increase my APM? I seem to be APM "capped" at about 50 when I am trying my hardest all game, and in worse games I go as low as 30 APM average.
When I watch replays, my opponents rarely average below 70ish and a lot go 80+. It seems like I still have about a 50% winrate against my Platinum opponents, yet my APM is so much lower.
Do you have any basic recommendations that would help me bring this number up? Thanks.
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I know the focus on the Bronze / Silver is pure macro, but on Filter's "Bronze to Masters" thread, there are a lot of bronze players QQing that they are getting cheesed and attacked with all-in stealth plays.
I understand that the benchmarks are all recommendations not laws. Just wondering if there is any value for scouting naturals in like the high bronze / silver league and is there a benchmark to consider getting stealth detection?
Filter put some benchmarks up for Terran players to shoot for, 50SCV 100 Food @ 10 minutes with a expansion started at 3:45ish. I have been practicing like mad to hit that number.
It seems the high masters are putting together some great coaching threads.
Thanks a lot!
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Nice guideline. Definitly true. Although I'm not 100% sure wether the 'No Scouting at all' Part for Bronze/Silver is really correct. But as most of the players at this level won't recognize a cheese or all-in even when they scout you might be right. I've seen so many times how friend of mine who is in Silver, goes for Drop play and while doing that piles up tons of overmins...
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On June 09 2012 17:45 Elisterre wrote: I really like this post, I am a Platinum Zerg. It looks like there are a lot of things I can start working on.
I have 1 question, what can I do to try and increase my APM? I seem to be APM "capped" at about 50 when I am trying my hardest all game, and in worse games I go as low as 30 APM average.
When I watch replays, my opponents rarely average below 70ish and a lot go 80+. It seems like I still have about a 50% winrate against my Platinum opponents, yet my APM is so much lower.
Do you have any basic recommendations that would help me bring this number up? Thanks.
Really don't worry about your APM. I'm a Platinum Zerg who feels like he's stuck in Plat too and my APM is on average (I stress average, not a freak peak or anything) 280-350APM/150-180EAPM. Further proving APM means just about nothing.
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nice! excellent write-up.. I agree with everything platinum and onwards ( i've never myself been anything below platinum so dunno if that advice is correct, but it seems good so im gonna go ahead and give you the thumbs up on that one).
Analyzing progress like this can be very hard... its like noticing the change in your appearance overtime by looking in the mirror everyday for 2 years... like, I feel that I don't really play that differently as when i was in platinum league - I am now master, so there must have been something that changed LOL... but i think its cool you are able to give advice on different leagues.. can be quite hard to see the game from all those different perspectives! so good job on that..
and thanks for the tips!
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On June 09 2012 17:14 Cracy wrote:As a silver level player I must say this is a single most useful thread I have seen in this forum ever and I read most of them Despite the discussion which is welcomed, it shows something which I didn't figure out myself until recently (and not without a huge help of someone else, Hi Lennox People tend to forget that you have to learn waking before you run and thank you for reminding us this. I agree it is very detrimental to try to do all the fancy things you see pros do. And you try... Back to basics...
I'm glad it helped. It's funny because even in Masters League I find that when I start losing lots of games, it's because I miss one of the basics. Sure sometimes it's because I didn't do enough with my infestors or had a bad position in a fight or missed my bane bombs or w/e, but a lot of times it will be because I'm so focused on microing my drone that I get supply blocked at 28/28 and then when he goes for a fast 1 base all in I lose a game I could have easily won.
On June 09 2012 17:45 Elisterre wrote: I really like this post, I am a Platinum Zerg. It looks like there are a lot of things I can start working on.
I have 1 question, what can I do to try and increase my APM? I seem to be APM "capped" at about 50 when I am trying my hardest all game, and in worse games I go as low as 30 APM average.
When I watch replays, my opponents rarely average below 70ish and a lot go 80+. It seems like I still have about a 50% winrate against my Platinum opponents, yet my APM is so much lower.
Do you have any basic recommendations that would help me bring this number up? Thanks.
Someone else kind of answered this and I think there are a couple of answers. 1. I have a friend who averages like 60APM and he is in Masters league. I have known him since BW and we always made fun of him because in all of our games we all hit above 150 easy and he never made it over 80. That being said, he is the same level as us so that definitely says something about efficiency and that mass APM is not everything 2. In starcraft 2 there generally is less need for apm due to how the game changed from BW, I still think you will want to be slightly above 50 and for sure above 30. What I'd really be curious is to how often do you play? A lot of the game is building muscle/mind memory in so that you will double click a hotkey, know exactly what to do, do it, and move on in a split second. I find a lot of players that don't play enough will double click a hotkey, take a second to think about the next move, do it, and then move on. If you can get rid of all that thinking time then you will increase your apm.
A great way to just increase APM though is to play all of those custom games on battlenet that are aimed at it. There is this one game (name I forget) where you have to build your base all the while microing around a probe (which you can't give shift move commands). While it's more focused on allowing you to build while you focus on your army, I think it would still be good because it will give you less time to perform actions back at your base thus increasing apm and getting rid of that "think" time.
On June 10 2012 00:26 Allenansgar wrote: I know the focus on the Bronze / Silver is pure macro, but on Filter's "Bronze to Masters" thread, there are a lot of bronze players QQing that they are getting cheesed and attacked with all-in stealth plays.
I understand that the benchmarks are all recommendations not laws. Just wondering if there is any value for scouting naturals in like the high bronze / silver league and is there a benchmark to consider getting stealth detection?
Filter put some benchmarks up for Terran players to shoot for, 50SCV 100 Food @ 10 minutes with a expansion started at 3:45ish. I have been practicing like mad to hit that number.
It seems the high masters are putting together some great coaching threads.
Thanks a lot!
I still don't think there is much value to the scout because I have seen so many players run in with a scout and not even know what they're looking for. They get in, see 5 barracks on one base, and then they tech up to lair and start getting +1/+1 upgrades. Don't scout if you don't know what to look for, and at that level I don't even want you to worry about that.
Stealth all-ins will be a little bit of trouble but I think as a terran player you have it best since you have scans. If you are honestly worried about them, just start saving up a scan once you reach 6:30. Then when you get hit with the cloaked units, you have a scan to use. Plus if you are on 2 bases you will probably get another scan pretty soon. For zergs I would recommend throwing down an evo chamber blind at around 6:15. The best dark templar rushes will hit just before 7:00 and the best cloak banshees probably hit around 7:30 (depends the BO). If they come into your base with cloak units, throw down a ton of spores as a zerg or use your scans wisely as a terran. For protoss, I think you should already have an observer up in your build order by then. I think you should either 3gate expand or 3gate robo expand, but either way you need to get that robo up and an observer out eventually and you'll be fine.
On June 10 2012 00:51 MagnuMizer wrote: nice! excellent write-up.. I agree with everything platinum and onwards ( i've never myself been anything below platinum so dunno if that advice is correct, but it seems good so im gonna go ahead and give you the thumbs up on that one).
Analyzing progress like this can be very hard... its like noticing the change in your appearance overtime by looking in the mirror everyday for 2 years... like, I feel that I don't really play that differently as when i was in platinum league - I am now master, so there must have been something that changed LOL... but i think its cool you are able to give advice on different leagues.. can be quite hard to see the game from all those different perspectives! so good job on that..
and thanks for the tips!
It's definitely hard to analyze progress. Which is why the more attention you pay to your macro details the better you will be and see yourself. For example, if I watch a game where I lost vs a 2base blink stalker all in, and then a game where I won it, it will still be hard for me to see the difference unless I look at details. All of the sudden I have the tabs open in instant replay and I note that in the game I lost I had been supply blocked twice, was 7 drones short, and had speed 30 seconds later. If you look in the mirror everyday you won't really notice yourself change, but if compare the overall pictures from them apart you will see all the little details that did change and why you look different. Match by match you are not going to suddenly jump a league, but if you can work it out so you get supply blocked 1 less time, or inject 1 more time, you will start to improve.
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I don't know, but my strategy of always playing faster than what feels comfortable and scouting my ass off works just fine for me in high Platinum / lower Diamond. I don't think I lack "experience" to react to my constant information and I definitely feel like using mutas and other micro intensive units since the early days in bronze league have made my hotkeys and unit control something of a non-issue. I'd say what kills me most of the time is my eagerness to kill my opponent, which is something I've been working on, only it's hard for me to not be hurting them all game and scouting all the time to make the right units when I need them. I find sitting around and macroing with limited information to be a very poor way of playing in Platinum, and I almost feel as if the OP is out of touch with Platinum league skill level at the moment. To say you need nothing more than a basic scout and to check for an expansion to detect an all-in is almost advice I would give to silver or gold league players, since most Platinum players should know this by then. If anything, it's more important to scout much more and increase your understanding of what your opponents are doing and what kind of timings they can come at you with. To mostly ignore your opponent's build and focus on yourself is pretty much the way to lose in Platinum league at this point. It's not as terrible as you may think.
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I disagree with the bronze/silver part. I say try to actually scout, this is just for cheese and knowing the enemy's position. You literally need to scout since lower leagues are just unpredicatable, 4gates and 7-8min Banshee rushes could come from anywhere.
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On June 10 2012 03:43 dUTtrOACh wrote: I don't know, but my strategy of always playing faster than what feels comfortable and scouting my ass off works just fine for me in high Platinum / lower Diamond. I don't think I lack "experience" to react to my constant information and I definitely feel like using mutas and other micro intensive units since the early days in bronze league have made my hotkeys and unit control something of a non-issue. I'd say what kills me most of the time is my eagerness to kill my opponent, which is something I've been working on, only it's hard for me to not be hurting them all game and scouting all the time to make the right units when I need them. I find sitting around and macroing with limited information to be a very poor way of playing in Platinum, and I almost feel as if the OP is out of touch with Platinum league skill level at the moment. To say you need nothing more than a basic scout and to check for an expansion to detect an all-in is almost advice I would give to silver or gold league players, since most Platinum players should know this by then. If anything, it's more important to scout much more and increase your understanding of what your opponents are doing and what kind of timings they can come at you with. To mostly ignore your opponent's build and focus on yourself is pretty much the way to lose in Platinum league at this point. It's not as terrible as you may think.
I think it's good to definitely develop your mechanics and unit micro and such, but in terms of utilizing your APM for the best it can be, it's better to get down your macro and, in my opinion, in the order of the steps I provided.
I don't think I'm out of touch with platinum considering I coach a lot of platinum players. I watch their games, and 95% of the time they lose is because they are missing their macro benchmarks, not because they didn't have a scout on their opponents base when he went for an 8 gate all in. I don't scout the 8 gate all in plenty of times yet I hold it because I have 30 more units to defend with than the platinum player.
First work on yourself, then work on scouting your opponent. I feel this is the best way to improve.
On June 10 2012 04:01 FayZe wrote: I disagree with the bronze/silver part. I say try to actually scout, this is just for cheese and knowing the enemy's position. You literally need to scout since lower leagues are just unpredicatable, 4gates and 7-8min Banshee rushes could come from anywhere.
I think filterSC does a great job showcasing that this is not the case at all. The point is, at those levels the other players aren't going to be coming out with these perfect rushes or timing pushes that you couldn't hold with simply good macro.
I've played some games at that level and held 4 gates with only queens while droning non-stop behind it. the point is, they don't hit as hard there and you should be fine assuming you are taking care of everything else correctly.
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Very nice guide, it's easy to read and has many helpful tips. I agree with most thing you wrote and it will surely help lower league players to increse their level by a lot.
Great read !
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On June 10 2012 04:14 MrLlama wrote: I think filterSC does a great job showcasing that this is not the case at all. The point is, at those levels the other players aren't going to be coming out with these perfect rushes or timing pushes that you couldn't hold with simply good macro.
I've played some games at that level and held 4 gates with only queens while droning non-stop behind it. the point is, they don't hit as hard there and you should be fine assuming you are taking care of everything else correctly.
I really don't know the last time you've played a high bronze or silver player, but they actually know what they're doing and aren't as mentally incapacitated as you may think they are. Sure, mid to late game macro isn't what you call top notch but they have build orders down. Especially for simple 4gates, I doubt you held it with queens while droning behind it. That's a terrible exaggeration when they can hit the benchmarks at 5:50 keep warping waves of zealots to counter defensive zerglings and stalkers for your queens. Bronze and Silver maybe lower leagues but they're nowhere near retarded to abstain from basic things like scouting.
All in all, extremely nice guide with a few over-exaggerations into lower league play.
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Do not get any unit for harrass, just a unit to add to your army for more damage/tankability/versatility.
I think by the time you are Terran and at Gold, you need to be harassing. Against equally macro-managing Protoss and Zerg opponents, ramming big pushes into your opponents over and over again is very likely to lose you the game.
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On June 10 2012 04:14 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2012 03:43 dUTtrOACh wrote: I don't know, but my strategy of always playing faster than what feels comfortable and scouting my ass off works just fine for me in high Platinum / lower Diamond. I don't think I lack "experience" to react to my constant information and I definitely feel like using mutas and other micro intensive units since the early days in bronze league have made my hotkeys and unit control something of a non-issue. I'd say what kills me most of the time is my eagerness to kill my opponent, which is something I've been working on, only it's hard for me to not be hurting them all game and scouting all the time to make the right units when I need them. I find sitting around and macroing with limited information to be a very poor way of playing in Platinum, and I almost feel as if the OP is out of touch with Platinum league skill level at the moment. To say you need nothing more than a basic scout and to check for an expansion to detect an all-in is almost advice I would give to silver or gold league players, since most Platinum players should know this by then. If anything, it's more important to scout much more and increase your understanding of what your opponents are doing and what kind of timings they can come at you with. To mostly ignore your opponent's build and focus on yourself is pretty much the way to lose in Platinum league at this point. It's not as terrible as you may think. I think it's good to definitely develop your mechanics and unit micro and such, but in terms of utilizing your APM for the best it can be, it's better to get down your macro and, in my opinion, in the order of the steps I provided. I don't think I'm out of touch with platinum considering I coach a lot of platinum players. I watch their games, and 95% of the time they lose is because they are missing their macro benchmarks, not because they didn't have a scout on their opponents base when he went for an 8 gate all in. I don't scout the 8 gate all in plenty of times yet I hold it because I have 30 more units to defend with than the platinum player. First work on yourself, then work on scouting your opponent. I feel this is the best way to improve. Show nested quote +On June 10 2012 04:01 FayZe wrote: I disagree with the bronze/silver part. I say try to actually scout, this is just for cheese and knowing the enemy's position. You literally need to scout since lower leagues are just unpredicatable, 4gates and 7-8min Banshee rushes could come from anywhere. I think filterSC does a great job showcasing that this is not the case at all. The point is, at those levels the other players aren't going to be coming out with these perfect rushes or timing pushes that you couldn't hold with simply good macro. I've played some games at that level and held 4 gates with only queens while droning non-stop behind it. the point is, they don't hit as hard there and you should be fine assuming you are taking care of everything else correctly.
I guess I'm just overestimating Platinum league. I do know a few people who suffer from not making enough stuff in Platinum. They may indeed be the majority. There are some of them who sit there and make a bunch of shit, but don't realize they're making completely the wrong shit, and also don't realize that they're infinitely behind and about to die, despite having survived early attacks. Most of the time I blame this on their complacency and complete lack of scouting past the 6 min. mark.
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On June 10 2012 04:52 FayZe wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2012 04:14 MrLlama wrote: I think filterSC does a great job showcasing that this is not the case at all. The point is, at those levels the other players aren't going to be coming out with these perfect rushes or timing pushes that you couldn't hold with simply good macro.
I've played some games at that level and held 4 gates with only queens while droning non-stop behind it. the point is, they don't hit as hard there and you should be fine assuming you are taking care of everything else correctly. I really don't know the last time you've played a high bronze or silver player, but they actually know what they're doing and aren't as mentally incapacitated as you may think they are. Sure, mid to late game macro isn't what you call top notch but they have build orders down. Especially for simple 4gates, I doubt you held it with queens while droning behind it. That's a terrible exaggeration when they can hit the benchmarks at 5:50 keep warping waves of zealots to counter defensive zerglings and stalkers for your queens. Bronze and Silver maybe lower leagues but they're nowhere near retarded to abstain from basic things like scouting. All in all, extremely nice guide with a few over-exaggerations into lower league play.
I was not exaggerating when saying I have held 4 gates with only queens and drones. Here is generally how it goes. I drone hard, don't take gas, I don't get supply blocked or anything. I make 5-6 queens, get an evo at 5:00 in case of dts, and throw up 2-3 spines because I can afford it (since I have so many drones and so much money).
Then I just drone, hold them off, transfuse, pull drones when needed, and that's it.
Of course my micro is much greater than that of a bronze-silver player but they are using units to help hold while I'm just straight droning so that's where they can slack on the micro.
On June 10 2012 05:06 Kraidio wrote:Show nested quote + Do not get any unit for harrass, just a unit to add to your army for more damage/tankability/versatility. I think by the time you are Terran and at Gold, you need to be harassing. Against equally macro-managing Protoss and Zerg opponents, ramming big pushes into your opponents over and over again is very likely to lose you the game.
I think you believe players macro better than they do in gold and can continue this while harassing.
You are 100% correct in saying "Against equally macro-managing Protoss and Zerg opponents, ramming big pushes into your opponents over and over again is very likely to lose you the game."
But the whole point of this is that you are going to put yourself ABOVE them in macro (mostly because you work on it and they focus on trying to harass and do silly little things).
Your post makes it sound like once you hit gold you have perfect macro, which isn't the case. You don't even have perfect macro in masters, but it's a heck of a lot better than in gold (and so is your opponents) so then you have to start thinking about what else to add on top of it.
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i agree with what u say here, but i think u have slightly underestimated the skill of platinum and diamond players. other than that, great post.
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Here is a classic example of why macro alone isn't enough to win games in Platinum:
http://drop.sc/195021
This was one of my best macro performances ever in terms of injects and keeping my minerals low, with a spending quotient number of Masters+ (admittedly not a fair statistic, since that's averaged across all games and in this one I was left alone to macro). I was maxed at 14 minutes and just threw my army at the opponent without worrying about where I engaged. I got destroyed by a Gold player because of bad engagements.
I think this illustrates your point about engagements being important in Platinum (arguably Gold if my opponent is any guide).
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I have to disagree with a lot of what you have said. Players have to get basics down, correct. But this does not mean "don't scout." This does not mean "don't get sentries." This does not mean "just get a tier1 army and 1a."
If players don't start using everything, they will come to a situation like your friend - they will find a player who can hold their mass tier 1 1a, and not know what to do.
I used to 4gate every game just to move up the ladder quickly. Then I realised it was BETTER to play for the 30 minute games, to help me know how to use everything, what counters what, and improving my general mechanics macroing off 4/5 bases.
In the lower leagues there is a lot of cheese. People do know basic things like which all in to do. FFEing every PvZ = 60% roach all-ins. You have to scout for that. I remember having a probe on the natural to block an expo, and he never came down to kill it - I wandered in to find him doing a 1 base roach nydus play that could have caused me serious damage. You HAVE to scout, every game. It has to be a habit that is as natural as building workers. The mineral harass etc, yes, that isn't necessary.
Also, please be specific about "always make workers." Because I have encountered players who will get 120 drones off 3 base because of this mantra. Remember, it is BAD to have more than 2 workers per mineral patch. 16 for minerals, 6 for gas, per base. Any more, and you are actually reducing income.
Anyway, that's it. It's not that what you're saying isn't true, it is - there are a lot of unnecessary things low level players do that they don't need to to win at that level, because they've seen a pro do it. But things like scouting and tech have to be as basic as anything else if they want to not get stuck in a rut in the middle of gold/plat.
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I agree with the general criticism that these hints do not form a way to successfully win in lower leagues. DT all-ins, weird banshee or drop plays and not scouting expansion timings can easily kill you in all leagues. The problem here is a discrepancy in the promised goal, and what the hints actually do: Following these hints would definitely improve my macro play. However, it will not allow me to win more games, or quickly climb the ladder. Instead I'll drop in wins for quite a time, then improve more quickly later on.
So basically the suggestions offered are a long term min-max training strategy to increase game-prowess. I guess that's a worthwhile goal for some people. But for me, single mindedly concentrating on macro would be no fun at all, and therefore I won't do it.
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On June 10 2012 09:45 Chutoro wrote:Here is a classic example of why macro alone isn't enough to win games in Platinum: http://drop.sc/195021This was one of my best macro performances ever in terms of injects and keeping my minerals low, with a spending quotient number of Masters+ (admittedly not a fair statistic, since that's averaged across all games and in this one I was left alone to macro). I was maxed at 14 minutes and just threw my army at the opponent without worrying about where I engaged. I got destroyed by a Gold player because of bad engagements. I think this illustrates your point about engagements being important in Platinum (arguably Gold if my opponent is any guide).
Minor places where the macro slipped but overall you did decently well with it. Here were just a couple observations but don't take these too harshly, like I said it was pretty good.
1. Supply blocked at 36 2. 5:55 - You start worrying about moving your overlord around outside the front of his base. You also just occuppied yourself with pulling off/putting drones on once again and you completely missed a full inject cycle already on your natural queen 3. 900 minerals at 8:00. You've been floating over 600 for a bit now and have had 11 larvae to spend. 4. No queen at the 3rd for a bit.
That being said, ZvZ is a whole different ballgame when it comes to macro. Zerg in general is a little more difficult because you CAN'T make workers the whole game since you have to use larvae for units and workers. This is where it can difficult and while you think you are playing perfectly with master level macro, you aren't and it's hard to judge.
You did a good job getting the drone lead early on, then you made a roach warren followed by THIRTY SEVEN ROACHES. Big attack after making them? nope, you just went back to droning. I know you want to feel safe but having 37 roaches when your opponent has 12 means that you either have to attack or you will fall back behind/even. Look to drone when you can and make units only when necessary (in zvz it's okay to send a scout ling every now and then to check his army size out. Don't pay too much attention and it will die fast, just send it over and glance quickly).
Another thing I'd like to note about my plat notes: "-I think platinum is the best place to start worrying about unit control. Anything below this league should focus on the production of units and workers but once you get those skills down you can start looking at your army."
I think this is true and that's what failed you in this game, which is exactly a goal that I put in plat league for players to work on and exactly what you said about it proving the point. You maxed, charged over to his base, and then got all of your units caught on the up ramp. Something that you have to learn as a plat player with unit control is the "move forward stutter" that zerg needs to do. Notice how bad the range is for roaches and how little of them were actually able to attack. You saw that your army size was larger so what do you do? You do an attack, then move units up next to his army (right next to it) and let them attack again. This will let it be all of your units vs all of his units instead of 1/4 your units vs all of his units. This was a positioning loss game for the most part. You could also look to attack somewhere else instead of up a ramp towards his army, but even so you could have pushed forward with your units and made that work.
"-I'd say platinum league should be the first time that you really touch infestors and mutalisks. They are both extremely fragile and time consuming so you want to make sure you are doing everything right elsewhere before you start using these units."
You didn't touch any infestor or muta tech. I think it would've been helpful to get once you maxed out and as you were pushing/slightly before so you could remax with some.
"-Think about positioning now for engagements. If you can get a swarm on an army from multiple sides you will do MUCH more damage."
Once again I mention positioning would be huge in this league and you are exactly right that you needed a little more than macro here. If you did everything you did that game, and then came in with half your units for a flank in that battle, you win easy every time.
On June 10 2012 10:33 Larkin wrote: I have to disagree with a lot of what you have said. Players have to get basics down, correct. But this does not mean "don't scout." This does not mean "don't get sentries." This does not mean "just get a tier1 army and 1a."
If players don't start using everything, they will come to a situation like your friend - they will find a player who can hold their mass tier 1 1a, and not know what to do.
I used to 4gate every game just to move up the ladder quickly. Then I realised it was BETTER to play for the 30 minute games, to help me know how to use everything, what counters what, and improving my general mechanics macroing off 4/5 bases.
In the lower leagues there is a lot of cheese. People do know basic things like which all in to do. FFEing every PvZ = 60% roach all-ins. You have to scout for that. I remember having a probe on the natural to block an expo, and he never came down to kill it - I wandered in to find him doing a 1 base roach nydus play that could have caused me serious damage. You HAVE to scout, every game. It has to be a habit that is as natural as building workers. The mineral harass etc, yes, that isn't necessary.
Also, please be specific about "always make workers." Because I have encountered players who will get 120 drones off 3 base because of this mantra. Remember, it is BAD to have more than 2 workers per mineral patch. 16 for minerals, 6 for gas, per base. Any more, and you are actually reducing income.
Anyway, that's it. It's not that what you're saying isn't true, it is - there are a lot of unnecessary things low level players do that they don't need to to win at that level, because they've seen a pro do it. But things like scouting and tech have to be as basic as anything else if they want to not get stuck in a rut in the middle of gold/plat.
I appreciate the feedback and I understand what you're trying to say. The point that I'm trying to make though is that when my friend who makes banshees finally gets around people who can hold banshees, he is lacking in his macro and now before he can start to win games really he is going to have to go back and learn all of that. The amount of stuff that he is going to have to learn/practice is enormous. The player who has great macro and masses up a max army then 1as and loses has a lot less to work on. In the game just above we see how simple unit positioning was the difference between crushing his opponent and losing. It's a lot easier if you can get that max army and be ahead in macro then just fix your unit engagement, than to be behind in macro and have good unit control.
As for you "always make workers" statement yes of course having 120 drones is too much, but it's easier to cutback on making workers than it is to never be making them and have to start getting them. The best way to learn in my opinion as a zerg player is to overdrone, lose to a push, then try again and drone a little bit less. Eventually you reach the optimal point of droning where you can still hold and thus you find that sweet spot (I'd recommend getting your friend to do the same push over and over). Think of that as someone saying "Always drink lots of water." Yes, there is always the extreme of too much water being bad for you, but the idea of "drink water" is something that should stick and then you can get a feel for when you are getting full on water and stop then.
On June 10 2012 10:33 Sbuiko wrote: I agree with the general criticism that these hints do not form a way to successfully win in lower leagues. DT all-ins, weird banshee or drop plays and not scouting expansion timings can easily kill you in all leagues. The problem here is a discrepancy in the promised goal, and what the hints actually do: Following these hints would definitely improve my macro play. However, it will not allow me to win more games, or quickly climb the ladder. Instead I'll drop in wins for quite a time, then improve more quickly later on.
So basically the suggestions offered are a long term min-max training strategy to increase game-prowess. I guess that's a worthwhile goal for some people. But for me, single mindedly concentrating on macro would be no fun at all, and therefore I won't do it.
" Following these hints would definitely improve my macro play. However, it will not allow me to win more games, or quickly climb the ladder."
I think this is where you're mistaken. Even for me today the second that I remember to macro properly and start improving my droning/no supply blocks, I find I win many more games. There is no immediate drop for when you start to macro, in fact there is actually more of an immediate improvement because all of the sudden you find yourself with so many more resources and so many more units that it becomes a lot easier to fight and hold cheeses. If a guy does banshee play against you and you have 28 workers and a decent amount of fighting units, let's say he kills 8 workers before you fend him off. Now that same guy comes over vs me and I have 48 workers and he kills 16 workers before I fend him off (yikes!)
In the end I have 32 workers and you have 20 workers, even though I lost twice as many as you. This allows me to quickly build up either more drones or get an army >= your army in which case I'm ahead either way.
I think zerg is the toughest to try and explain because of the dynamic of how building units vs workers works for the race so if anybody is discussing zerg just know that you may have a little bit different issues. That being said, I am a zerg player so I tried my best to have my advice/benchmarks be able to hit all 3 races effectively and as best as I could.
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this is completely correct. Though even in masters there are still many plat/diamond advice that isnt used (i.e. more than 1 hotkey for army, controlling multi pronged attacks)
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On June 10 2012 12:51 SEA KarMa wrote: this is completely correct. Though even in masters there are still many plat/diamond advice that isnt used (i.e. more than 1 hotkey for army, controlling multi pronged attacks)
Which is why I said start at the bronze league advice and work your way up. Sometimes you are in a higher league because you have amazing decision making or unit micro or something, but you can still be lacking something from the gold league advice which could really help you out.
On a side note, since I wrote this guide I have gone 9-0 in my ladder games (with great macro, almost zero supply blocks, and all convincing wins). Sometimes it helps to get back to the basics and make sure you are doing all of that right first, even as a masters player.
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As someone really new to the game I found this to be a lifesaver. Working up from the bottom of the barrel in Bronze.
Yes, sometimes Bronze/Silver players cheese you / counter you and you lose doing this. You will always lose a few games.
I watched a bunch of pro games before starting to play ladder and I think it gave me a lot of bad ideas (was trying to do WAY too much stuff. Lost all of my first 10+ games).
Focusing only on macro I've suddenly started taking a ton of games. I have been teching more than you are saying but I think I'll cut it back because I still definitely miss tons of probes. I am planning on getting a forge up though because the upgrades can really make your unit advantage even better when you end up against a player with a non-idiotic unit composition like my huge ball of stalkers. Still too much?
One thing I'm having trouble with is expansions. Should I never go past 2 bases as a beginning player?
Also, I have been attacking and running around the map a little using only the minimap which is probably making my macro slip, but is just fun :D Can't help it. Watching the replays after to see the massacres. I usually have WAY more units than my opponent...
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On June 10 2012 16:40 jodeci wrote: As someone really new to the game I found this to be a lifesaver. Working up from the bottom of the barrel in Bronze.
Yes, sometimes Bronze/Silver players cheese you / counter you and you lose doing this. You will always lose a few games.
I watched a bunch of pro games before starting to play ladder and I think it gave me a lot of bad ideas (was trying to do WAY too much stuff. Lost all of my first 10+ games).
Focusing only on macro I've suddenly started taking a ton of games. I have been teching more than you are saying but I think I'll cut it back because I still definitely miss tons of probes. I am planning on getting a forge up though because the upgrades can really make your unit advantage even better when you end up against a player with a non-idiotic unit composition like my huge ball of stalkers. Still too much?
One thing I'm having trouble with is expansions. Should I never go past 2 bases as a beginning player?
Also, I have been attacking and running around the map a little using only the minimap which is probably making my macro slip, but is just fun :D Can't help it. Watching the replays after to see the massacres. I usually have WAY more units than my opponent...
That is exactly the point I'm trying to make and I think a lot of people miss it. Sure you will lose games doing this, but you will lose games doing anything. The point is, as you showed, you will start to take control of a lot more games convincingly by getting up your core play as opposed to the smaller parts of it.
To answer your questions: 1. I think the additional tech is definitely unnecessary, especially if you are missing the basics of workers and probably warping units in every gate cycle. As for upgrades, I think 1-1 is acceptable right now, but don't be cutting things to get it yet. Just get it casually as you are continuing to get mass amounts of workers and units. If the game pushes over a lot later, feel free to throw up a twilight and get 2/2 but don't get blink or anything that requires unit control.
2. There is a lot of debate with expansions at the lower levels. The reason is because the more bases that you have, the more ground you have to cover and thus you can get overwhelmed. I think 2 bases is appropriate for the first time you go to max out or get at least 150+ supply. I think once you max and go for a push, taking a 3rd base is then appropriate as you will start to mine out of your main and if the game goes beyond that you will want to have places for your probes to mine. Then you can continue to add on and experiment with it and have fun in the late game but yeah you need to be careful with expanding too quickly as you will just get lost with all the bases.
3. Yeah you don't even really want to be watching at all right now, so it's good you are just using the minimap and then watching the massacre in your replays Definitely try and keep macro #1 though! Then in the future you'll be able to watch your battles
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Thanks for watching the replay, I appreciate the feedback. I posted it in this thread mainly because I felt like it illustrated your points pretty well, otherwise I'd have made a help thread out of it.
1. Supply blocked at 36
Noticed that one on replay.
2. 5:55 - You start worrying about moving your overlord around outside the front of his base. You also just occuppied yourself with pulling off/putting drones on once again and you completely missed a full inject cycle already on your natural queen
Missed that one, thanks. Will check it. (edit) I take the point on the inject and drone pulls, but the overlord thing here and again at 6:30 was me trying to figure out if I was safe to keep droning.
3. 900 minerals at 8:00. You've been floating over 600 for a bit now and have had 11 larvae to spend.
Noticed that one too.
4. No queen at the 3rd for a bit.
I think I missed noticing that one, but I agree in hindsight.
That being said, ZvZ is a whole different ballgame when it comes to macro. Zerg in general is a little more difficult because you CAN'T make workers the whole game since you have to use larvae for units and workers. This is where it can difficult and while you think you are playing perfectly with master level macro, you aren't and it's hard to judge.
I don't actually think my macro was master level, despite how I may have phrased it (although I do think it was good for Platinum). I said my spending quotient number was master level (which is true) but I also think that spending quotient misses a lot of the story. Basically spending quotient measures how fast you gain resources and how efficiently you spend them, both of which I think I did pretty well on in this game (at least for Plat) but then it's one where I was left completely alone until 200/200, so I would expect a Zerg player of any league to macro better than normal in this situation.
You did a good job getting the drone lead early on, then you made a roach warren followed by THIRTY SEVEN ROACHES. Big attack after making them? nope, you just went back to droning.
Yeah, I think this was a big one. I think I had originally planned to do a big attack with +1 but then changed my mind for some reason and decided to add hydras and get to 200/200. It was not based on anything I scouted, just indecision, so I agree this is a flaw.
I think this is true and that's what failed you in this game, which is exactly a goal that I put in plat league for players to work on and exactly what you said about it proving the point. You maxed, charged over to his base, and then got all of your units caught on the up ramp. Something that you have to learn as a plat player with unit control is the "move forward stutter" that zerg needs to do. Notice how bad the range is for roaches and how little of them were actually able to attack. You saw that your army size was larger so what do you do? You do an attack, then move units up next to his army (right next to it) and let them attack again. This will let it be all of your units vs all of his units instead of 1/4 your units vs all of his units. This was a positioning loss game for the most part. You could also look to attack somewhere else instead of up a ramp towards his army, but even so you could have pushed forward with your units and made that work.
Thanks - pretty much what I had been thinking, but with some detail I was missing. Appreciate the tips.
"-I'd say platinum league should be the first time that you really touch infestors and mutalisks. They are both extremely fragile and time consuming so you want to make sure you are doing everything right elsewhere before you start using these units."
You didn't touch any infestor or muta tech. I think it would've been helpful to get once you maxed out and as you were pushing/slightly before so you could remax with some.
Agreed, and his infestors were a big factor in the game. I was maxed with the attack here so I could easily have included some. I have had games in which roach/hydra beats roach/infestor, but I think I missed the timing for that (either that or I engaged the wrong way for the composition).
"-Think about positioning now for engagements. If you can get a swarm on an army from multiple sides you will do MUCH more damage."
Once again I mention positioning would be huge in this league and you are exactly right that you needed a little more than macro here. If you did everything you did that game, and then came in with half your units for a flank in that battle, you win easy every time.
Thanks. When I say macro wasn't the reason I lost, I'm not saying my macro was perfect (as you pointed out, there was still plenty of room for improvement) just that it wasn't the weakest point in my game. My gut feeling after this one was that better engagements would have won it for me, and I agree that either flanking or your suggestion on the forward stutter would have done it.
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At least the gold part looks a little like "a way to stay in gold" or "a way to get into gold", but not the way to leave it really. I'm waiting for my promotion to plat right now, spent maybe about 100 games in here as Z. Not doing somewhat good scouting and not using infestors would make me lose against most of terrans and zergs, from my experience. In ZvT ling+roach would just lose me 9/10 games, in ZvZ not using infestors is not an option. Not going for a late game army even less. Protoss almost always do FFE and then go for a deathball, given a proper amount of sentries higher than 0, roaches/lings will just get crushed.
I really know I'm awful as hell, but I think the standards you point out (around gold-plat at least) don't describe the ways to somewhat work through those leagues. The high gold/plat games I do most times require me to do the things you describe in diamond (how well me & my opponent do them is a different question). Not scouting whether a T goes for bio/mech or a Z for mutas is a good way to lose 90% of gold games, really.
While the percentage of "bad" players might be pretty high still in gold, you wouldn't believe the amount of 6/7 gates that hit me at 8:30-9:00 (4 in 5 games vs P), the amount of Protosses holding off max roaches, the amount of Terrans properly spreading marines, Terrans going for well timed mech and Zergs using infestors (mandatory in most games) and doing smooth transitions.
But in the end I need to say, all this is being said by someone who is doing his way out of gold right now. If the golds I match don't have a star on their fancy rank symbol, I simply crush them, only the high golds/plats I play against really play on my level. So the things you described aren't too far off. Depends on the standpoint I guess.
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Low diamond zerg here, and I feel I fit your advice pretty well. I feel confident with most things in bronze-gold, feel that I'm starting to master the things in platinum, and currently working on (but still not capable of doing) most of the things in diamond. Think my focus for improvement is more or less on track then. Thanks!
Was so happy a few weeks ago when I did the 12-min roach max and for teh first time actually was maxed by 12 mins!
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[QUOTE]On June 09 2012 07:05 MrLlama wrote:
Bronze/Silver [spoiler]Basics: + Show Spoiler +-There is no reason for scouting at this level. Strong macro should win out 99% of the time regardless of what your opponent is doing. -Always build workers. Always. -Keep your eyes in your base 95% of the time or more. If you ever watch a replay, you will see your macro fails when you are not looking at your base. Wait until you are a higher level before diverting your attention. -You should be able to A-move any army if you have good macro and win the game at this level. Thus, do not worry about tiny attacks or drops or timing windows. Simply macro up a large army, and A move to his base.
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I played a ladder game as zerg against a protoss. Played a macro game, my macro was way better. He built a deathball of voidrays and killed me cuz I didnt scout. But hey you did say 99% of the time.
Anyway it would be cool if we didnt have the same thread every 2 months and the community would make liquidpedia worth a dam.
That would help a lot of people on the ladder.
Edit: aperently I forgot how to do quotes now -.-
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On June 10 2012 17:56 Tevian wrote: At least the gold part looks a little like "a way to stay in gold" or "a way to get into gold", but not the way to leave it really. I'm waiting for my promotion to plat right now, spent maybe about 100 games in here as Z. Not doing somewhat good scouting and not using infestors would make me lose against most of terrans and zergs, from my experience. In ZvT ling+roach would just lose me 9/10 games, in ZvZ not using infestors is not an option. Not going for a late game army even less. Protoss almost always do FFE and then go for a deathball, given a proper amount of sentries higher than 0, roaches/lings will just get crushed.
I really know I'm awful as hell, but I think the standards you point out (around gold-plat at least) don't describe the ways to somewhat work through those leagues. The high gold/plat games I do most times require me to do the things you describe in diamond (how well me & my opponent do them is a different question). Not scouting whether a T goes for bio/mech or a Z for mutas is a good way to lose 90% of gold games, really.
While the percentage of "bad" players might be pretty high still in gold, you wouldn't believe the amount of 6/7 gates that hit me at 8:30-9:00 (4 in 5 games vs P), the amount of Protosses holding off max roaches, the amount of Terrans properly spreading marines, Terrans going for well timed mech and Zergs using infestors (mandatory in most games) and doing smooth transitions.
But in the end I need to say, all this is being said by someone who is doing his way out of gold right now. If the golds I match don't have a star on their fancy rank symbol, I simply crush them, only the high golds/plats I play against really play on my level. So the things you described aren't too far off. Depends on the standpoint I guess.
I think my advice is geared to say "if you are in gold, these are the things you need to work on so you will start to play vs platinum players. Then you can start working on the play goals and you should be able to advance to plat." So a lot of it I suppose is how you look at it.
That being said, you bring up a few points that I'd like to dispute
" Not doing somewhat good scouting and not using infestors would make me lose against most of terrans and zergs, from my experience. In ZvT ling+roach would just lose me 9/10 games, in ZvZ not using infestors is not an option. Not going for a late game army even less. Protoss almost always do FFE and then go for a deathball, given a proper amount of sentries higher than 0, roaches/lings will just get crushed."
The big thing you say is that you need infestors at this level and I think that's not true at all. I can easily win more than 50% of my games at my level without infestors or mutas If I want to. The big one you say is that you cannon win a zvz without infestors. Very very not true. Teching up to infestors is actually tricky and I have won many games with just strong ling/roach/bane pushes because I catch my opponent trying to tech to infestors. In the video here Stephano analysis you can watch as neither stephano nor nestea tech up to infestors. I myself have lots of games where I don't make the tech switch and my opponent does and it doesn't matter (and these are masters players with much better control than gold). Vs a protoss who does FFE into a nice ball, I promise if you can do the 12 minute stephano max (this includes hitting 68+ supply or more by 8 minutes) then you can A move every time and crush him.
On June 10 2012 18:57 Cascade wrote:Low diamond zerg here, and I feel I fit your advice pretty well. I feel confident with most things in bronze-gold, feel that I'm starting to master the things in platinum, and currently working on (but still not capable of doing) most of the things in diamond. Think my focus for improvement is more or less on track then. Thanks! Was so happy a few weeks ago when I did the 12-min roach max and for teh first time actually was maxed by 12 mins!
Congrats! Yeah it's extremely powerful when done right.
On June 10 2012 19:10 CrtBalorda wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2012 07:05 MrLlama wrote:Bronze/Silver[spoiler] Basics:+ Show Spoiler +-There is no reason for scouting at this level. Strong macro should win out 99% of the time regardless of what your opponent is doing. -Always build workers. Always. -Keep your eyes in your base 95% of the time or more. If you ever watch a replay, you will see your macro fails when you are not looking at your base. Wait until you are a higher level before diverting your attention. -You should be able to A-move any army if you have good macro and win the game at this level. Thus, do not worry about tiny attacks or drops or timing windows. Simply macro up a large army, and A move to his base. I played a ladder game as zerg against a protoss. Played a macro game, my macro was way better. He built a deathball of voidrays and killed me cuz I didnt scout. But hey you did say 99% of the time. Anyway it would be cool if we didnt have the same thread every 2 months and the community would make liquidpedia worth a dam. That would help a lot of people on the ladder.
Exactly, there are going to be games that you lose right now which is why I said 99% of the time. The point is that over the course of multiple games, you will start to have more stuff any thus be able to win more games that aren't crazy weird like that.
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I like the point that some players focus on smaller, less relevant details of pro players. I think a great way to learn the game is to master 1 base timings, one at a time. And then move on to 2 base timings, and move forward to more bases.
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On June 11 2012 00:29 zmansman17 wrote: I like the point that some players focus on smaller, less relevant details of pro players. I think a great way to learn the game is to master 1 base timings, one at a time. And then move on to 2 base timings, and move forward to more bases.
Yeah this is why I hesitate when players in bronze/silver ask if they can take 3-4+ bases. It's hard enough to cover everything on 1 base or 2 bases so by going for 3-4 there's a good chance you will get lost.
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I feel like you overestimate Terran units somehow. There is no way to beat a Protoss in gold without stutter stepping reasonably well. As well a 2:1 ration for vikings is maybe appropriate in masters league if you have insane good viking control but trust me a platinum level player will get raped by collos play if he has only a 2:1 ratio. Another point I would mention is that the real tricky part with getting better is no obsessing about winning. It is really a horrible feeling when you start only playing for the wins because you think that makes you better. As well when you reach diamond you should start getting some different builds for just one matchup. Up to then 1 build is enough for every matchup. Speaking from EU Master Terrans point of view
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agree with most of this but as more and more guides like this keep appearing and how to you tube videos the gap is closing bz to plat
im gold, and if i strictly followed the BSG advice here i think i would lose more than 50% of my games.
I know from experience looking at the base gets you killed. Doing no scouting gets you killed. I feel you should always send a drone to look for 1 thing gas/exp and an over lord sac at 6 mins
this very very basic shift click and back to base can give you peace of mind to know if hes doing a 1 base all in or some kind of cheese. lets face it, if u send a drone against a T and theres nothing there at least you know 6 lings will deal with any kind of early proxy cheese while ur spine builds.
Ive been bunker rushed in silver league (could of been a smurf tho) and he microed a marine and wiped 6 lings out he then did a number on my pulled probes, the bunker went up and he was going in and out really well. I would never have seen it coming if i didnt send initial ovie and d scout and my 2nd ovie to my nat. a shift click scout should be part of BSG level stuff.
2 lings on towers essential against P. In silver league its a 4gate heaven. DONT look at the base in this mu and stare at the minimap ull find the probe he sends to proxy. if uve macroed well and got ur roaches up when you see this its an ista win for you
of course i agree with everything said but i think apm isnt that important, being able to efficiently build structures and units with no mistakes at the right times with enough knowledge to notice rising minerals and beable to dump it will improve it automatically.
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On June 11 2012 08:19 Puritas wrote:I feel like you overestimate Terran units somehow. There is no way to beat a Protoss in gold without stutter stepping reasonably well. As well a 2:1 ration for vikings is maybe appropriate in masters league if you have insane good viking control but trust me a platinum level player will get raped by collos play if he has only a 2:1 ratio. Another point I would mention is that the real tricky part with getting better is no obsessing about winning. It is really a horrible feeling when you start only playing for the wins because you think that makes you better. As well when you reach diamond you should start getting some different builds for just one matchup. Up to then 1 build is enough for every matchup. Speaking from EU Master Terrans point of view
I think you underestimate the power of macro somehow.
With gold level macro, you will engage his army without stutter stepping and lose.
With higher level macro, you will engage his army without stutter stepping and dominate him
How do you get to that higher level macro? you practice it and stop focusing on the little things like stutter steps and moving your scv around in his base constantly as you slowly let your macro slip.
On June 11 2012 09:09 StatixEx wrote: agree with most of this but as more and more guides like this keep appearing and how to you tube videos the gap is closing bz to plat
im gold, and if i strictly followed the BSG advice here i think i would lose more than 50% of my games.
I know from experience looking at the base gets you killed. Doing no scouting gets you killed. I feel you should always send a drone to look for 1 thing gas/exp and an over lord sac at 6 mins
this very very basic shift click and back to base can give you peace of mind to know if hes doing a 1 base all in or some kind of cheese. lets face it, if u send a drone against a T and theres nothing there at least you know 6 lings will deal with any kind of early proxy cheese while ur spine builds.
Ive been bunker rushed in silver league (could of been a smurf tho) and he microed a marine and wiped 6 lings out he then did a number on my pulled probes, the bunker went up and he was going in and out really well. I would never have seen it coming if i didnt send initial ovie and d scout and my 2nd ovie to my nat. a shift click scout should be part of BSG level stuff.
2 lings on towers essential against P. In silver league its a 4gate heaven. DONT look at the base in this mu and stare at the minimap ull find the probe he sends to proxy. if uve macroed well and got ur roaches up when you see this its an ista win for you
of course i agree with everything said but i think apm isnt that important, being able to efficiently build structures and units with no mistakes at the right times with enough knowledge to notice rising minerals and beable to dump it will improve it automatically.
I think you are still stuck in the typical gold mindset, which is where you think your macro is already at a decent level and that adding a few extra units to your army is the max you'll be able to do and thus it won't be worth it.
This is very common and it's EXTREMELY hard to see past because it's very hard to tell when you are macroing better. When I was in diamond I thought I had perfect macro and just needed to work on unit micro or better scouting to advance into masters. I slowly started to move up into masters but if you look at the replays, it's because I droned more, got supply blocked less, and overall just had larger armies to win the game with. And now when I go back and look at my diamond macro I'm disgusted at how pitiful it actually was.
The effect that it will have is insane. As an example I would like to present an example from a game I just played.
ZVP He does FFE, I take 3 bases. I macro very well and have a 200/200 army by around 11:30 with +1 done. I tried to scout his base on multiple occasions but he has stalkers at all the brims and picks off my overlords (and I don't make an overseer because I don't feel like it since I know if he tries to push me now off 2 base then my max army can meet him outside, I can remax, and be fine).
12:00 hits, my roaches are now 1/1 and I start to move towards his base where I encounter about 7-8 carriers at the watch tower. I throw down spores at my main, throw down a spire, and walk my 200/200 army right into his base where I kill off both of his nexus, his stargates, his cybernetics core, and all of his buildings. He gg's out because let's face it, it was gg and I had about 15-20 corrupters ready to be made plus all of my spores.
This is a classic example of macro just being amazingly strong. Even without knowing he was going carriers, because I was at 200/200 with 1/1 upgrades and 75 drones to remax as needed, I didn't even need to have an anti-air unit to win the game.
So, that's all I have to say about that.
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hey- I am a silver player, and I do agree with what you stated regarding players overusing APM. I do it subconsiously, and it really does hurt my gameplay sometimes. However. i honestly think as a master player, you have completely underestimated us silver/gold players. What you said about controling-1-ing your entire army, and winning games through macroing- made things way too simple... i honestly don't think you can get to gold/plat by simply macroing and creating workers.
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On June 11 2012 14:05 findingthelimit wrote: hey- I am a silver player, and I do agree with what you stated regarding players overusing APM. I do it subconsiously, and it really does hurt my gameplay sometimes. However. i honestly think as a master player, you have completely underestimated us silver/gold players. What you said about controling-1-ing your entire army, and winning games through macroing- made things way too simple... i honestly don't think you can get to gold/plat by simply macroing and creating workers.
I'd like to play a game vs you where I maintain under 50 apm and only make workers and have good macro. I think you'll be surprised.
send me a message and we can play.
Edit: as I said up in the post above, it's very difficult to understand how much it would help you because you haven't really seen it in effect. If you don't wanna play and instead just want to see it, watch any ZvP in silver league or gold league and jump to 12 minutes (where you can have the 12 minute max roaches from good macro). Now Imagine that there is a 200/200 roach army at the door of the protoss army and tell me who would win that fight.
If you answered the 200/200 roach army, that's probably right unless he's playing a smurf protoss who is masters league+
This is one example but it carries over into every match up (though it's easier to visualize here)
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On June 11 2012 14:15 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2012 14:05 findingthelimit wrote: hey- I am a silver player, and I do agree with what you stated regarding players overusing APM. I do it subconsiously, and it really does hurt my gameplay sometimes. However. i honestly think as a master player, you have completely underestimated us silver/gold players. What you said about controling-1-ing your entire army, and winning games through macroing- made things way too simple... i honestly don't think you can get to gold/plat by simply macroing and creating workers. I'd like to play a game vs you where I maintain under 50 apm and only make workers and have good macro. I think you'll be surprised. send me a message and we can play. Edit: as I said up in the post above, it's very difficult to understand how much it would help you because you haven't really seen it in effect. If you don't wanna play and instead just want to see it, watch any ZvP in silver league or gold league and jump to 12 minutes (where you can have the 12 minute max roaches from good macro). Now Imagine that there is a 200/200 roach army at the door of the protoss army and tell me who would win that fight. If you answered the 200/200 roach army, that's probably right unless he's playing a smurf protoss who is masters league+ This is one example but it carries over into every match up (though it's easier to visualize here)
honestly, you will destroy me with 20 apm. maybe i didn't make my point well enough; what i was trying to say is that, even though macro management is indeed prioritized over micro-ing in lower leagues like silver/gold, at least a decent amount of knowledge is still required, such as understanding unit compositions, build orders and such; i don't think you can argue that being good at macro is more important / superior. Besides, us noobs like to understand the game as well, and knowing what to scout for, responding adaquately is part of the fun.
We all like to win, but if in your standpoint, winning means constantly and blindly creating workers, that really defeats the purpose of enjoying the game in the first place.
Obviously i have a lot to learn. peace
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It is ridiculous to assume that anyone in gold or even lower will hit max at 12 minutes. Completely without being pylon blocked and rushed, maybe. I told you before, and I'll do it again, 4/5 FFE games end up with 6 or 7 gates at 8:30-9:00 in gold league and if it wasn't for my opponents being idiots at times, I'd lose to them 70% of times. My execution is bad, but so is my opponents' a lot. In any case, you can't just look at your base and do nothing about a 7 gate.
I think you are seriously underestimating the lower leagues. When was the last time you spent more than 10 games in silver, gold and plat leagues, respectively? The prevalence of good build orders, constant scouting and usage of hotkeys might be really surprising to you.
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I very much so agree with the OP; if you're using your APM in the wrong place it can win you the game, but a lot of times you end up with lots of minerals and lots of army in your base killing you. Again, the OP is correct when he says you should allocate more APM to the detaily things when you get better. It's necessary to practice APM-stressing situations like harass + macro and whatnot, because (for example) I have 200 APM and when I offrace as Protoss I CANNOT warp prism harass and macro even though I played Protoss from Diamond to Masters. The reason is basically that I didn't stress my APM enough as I got better.
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On June 11 2012 14:46 findingthelimit wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On June 11 2012 14:15 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2012 14:05 findingthelimit wrote: hey- I am a silver player, and I do agree with what you stated regarding players overusing APM. I do it subconsiously, and it really does hurt my gameplay sometimes. However. i honestly think as a master player, you have completely underestimated us silver/gold players. What you said about controling-1-ing your entire army, and winning games through macroing- made things way too simple... i honestly don't think you can get to gold/plat by simply macroing and creating workers. I'd like to play a game vs you where I maintain under 50 apm and only make workers and have good macro. I think you'll be surprised. send me a message and we can play. Edit: as I said up in the post above, it's very difficult to understand how much it would help you because you haven't really seen it in effect. If you don't wanna play and instead just want to see it, watch any ZvP in silver league or gold league and jump to 12 minutes (where you can have the 12 minute max roaches from good macro). Now Imagine that there is a 200/200 roach army at the door of the protoss army and tell me who would win that fight. If you answered the 200/200 roach army, that's probably right unless he's playing a smurf protoss who is masters league+ This is one example but it carries over into every match up (though it's easier to visualize here) honestly, you will destroy me with 20 apm. maybe i didn't make my point well enough; what i was trying to say is that, even though macro management is indeed prioritized over micro-ing in lower leagues like silver/gold, at least a decent amount of knowledge is still required, such as understanding unit compositions, build orders and such; i don't think you can argue that being good at macro is more important / superior. Besides, us noobs like to understand the game as well, and knowing what to scout for, responding adaquately is part of the fun. We all like to win, but if in your standpoint, winning means constantly and blindly creating workers, that really defeats the purpose of enjoying the game in the first place. Obviously i have a lot to learn. peace
sure it can be good to understand unit compositions, but I think that's something you shouldn't get too detailed with yet. Instead of worrying about what to make, just make stuff. And you say I will destroy you with 20apm, so why can't anybody else at that level as well? My plan was to not go ahead of tier 1.5 units and just show up at your door with 3x the army which will roll all of your attempts at teching (until you get higher up in which case THAT is the time to learn the appropriate tech counters and unit compositions and such).
This next example is how I feel a lot of the conversation is going:
Master chess player: "Stop focusing on thinking 10 moves ahead and learning all of the little late game tricks. Right now you just need to learn basics like openers and if you have your pawns on the white squares, your dark square bishop is more valuable." The learning player: "But if I just learn about which bishop is more valuable I'll never win a game! I need to learn the game ending move and all of the possible checkmate situations if I ever want to win!"
But the thing is, if the learning player starts to learn better openers and understand value of pieces, he can make better trades and he will suddenly start to FIND himself at the end game with a lot more units and easy checkmates. Sure he is not going to beat the master player, but that's an unreasonable goal right now. Play the early game better (with better macro in SC2) and you will find how much more stuff you have at the end to win with.
On June 11 2012 14:54 Tevian wrote: It is ridiculous to assume that anyone in gold or even lower will hit max at 12 minutes. Completely without being pylon blocked and rushed, maybe. I told you before, and I'll do it again, 4/5 FFE games end up with 6 or 7 gates at 8:30-9:00 in gold league and if it wasn't for my opponents being idiots at times, I'd lose to them 70% of times. My execution is bad, but so is my opponents' a lot. In any case, you can't just look at your base and do nothing about a 7 gate.
I think you are seriously underestimating the lower leagues. When was the last time you spent more than 10 games in silver, gold and plat leagues, respectively? The prevalence of good build orders, constant scouting and usage of hotkeys might be really surprising to you.
If you are being pylon blocked, then you aren't macroing well enough and are diverting your attention too much and should spend more time in your base focusing on building those pylons.
That being said, I'm not saying you have to be maxed by 12:00 with roaches or whatever. I'm saying the majority of games that I watch silver/gold league players (I do coaching and I have a free replay analysis stream 5 days a week so I have seen WAY more than 10 games in bronze/silver/gold than you think) they barely are at 110 supply by 12 minutes (as zerg). If I can get them up to 160 or so, that's 25 more roaches in their army which is a huge difference if they fight then.
Also, this is why I don't think you should be taking a 3rd base yet. I understand why players take the 3rd base but at that level a lot of players simply don't have the macro or apm to cover 3 bases effectively (or even utitlize all of the macro potential that it brings). A lot of this is because most players don't understand the game enough, they just see the pros do it and therefore they should do it.
Here is my example: When I take 3 bases, I have 70 supply at 8 minutes. This consists of 60 drones, 4 queens, and 4 lings (roughly).
I have 16 workers on each mineral line (48 drones total) and 4 gas taken by then (12 drones).
This gives me perfect mineral saturation and I have good enough gas saturation to pump a couple waves of units to hold off their 9 minute 6gate or w/e they hit with.
When a bronze/silver/gold player has 3 bases, they usually have around 55 supply at 8 minutes. This consists of 40 drones, 3 queens, and then units (lings/roaches mix) because they don't understand the pressure that a FFE can bring.
They have 20 drones at 1 base, 8 at the other, and 6 at the 3rd base (34 drones). Then they have 2 geysers taken and filled. (6 drones). This is not always the case, but I'm bringing up my most previous example of a silver player I just watched.
The point is, they can't hold 3 bases with that. Hell, they can't even saturate 2 bases yet so why bother trying to make/defend the 3rd??
If he just sat on 2 bases he could have 17 drones at each base on minerals (16 is optimal, the next 8 get half as much income, and then anything beyond 24 brings no income) and then have his 2 gas. Heck, he could probably have more because he now has the extra 300 minerals he didn't spend on that early hatch and he probably is doing a little better only managing 2 bases instead of 3. He could also drop spines and only have to defend 1 base instead of 2, as well as have out more units to defend with since once again he is not invested in that 3rd hatch which has yet to payoff. If you don't understand that yet, it's okay, but listen to casters/pros when they say "ohhh he just took an expansion and is getting it saturated so right now he is vulnerable." Expansions take a couple minutes before they start to payoff for their cost/the cost to saturate them. In these zergs cases, they never reach the point of payoff and it ends up hurting them more than helping them.
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If you're new to the game, having good macro is way better will benefit you better than any other thing in the game. That's why it's called "mechanics" - it's the engine of your game. Driving skill might matter at times, but, simply put, the guy with better specs has way better chances of winning than the one running on steam engine.
So ye, I agree with the author, before thinking of fancy stuff like stutter-stepping/blink micro'ing/splitting try keeping your maco at a considerable level.
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Building pylons as Zerg? What?
Thanks for analyzing my mistakes without knowing my play though.
And once again you just assume a FFE toss will just do nothing and let you macro till 8 minutes and just let you hit 200/200 at 12 minutes. I simply don't get how you assume that 6/7 gates are just that easy to hold off. What if it hits you at 8:15 or even earlier? Well at least you have perfect saturation. What if he hits you with 3 or 4 Zealots and a probe at 7:30? That is usually the problem in the lower leagues, random stuff will just hit you, and a lot of people tend to overreact (like building 8 lings or a spine at your third and nat each), of course they won't hit 70 supply at 8:00.
Even a silver player should be able to hit 200/200 at 12 minutes given no pressure at all, the 12 minutes max is just that terribly easy. That is assuming you don't get pylon blocked at natural and 3rd. I don't see how taking a third is any harder than just dealing with two bases, then going for some whatever build, and then taking the third. You just expand one more time? Let's not even talk about this build requiring any high apm. It doesn't. It requires coordination, which the examples you mentioned lacked completely.
If you can't manage expanding once more and then just hitting injects/building roaches/lings, you most likely can't handle FFE with just 2 bases too.
We should stop throwing bronze in with gold though, the difference between those leagues is huge. I wasn't even going to argue with you about that build, all I ever tried to say is the things you want people to focus on are required to not get kicked out of the respective leagues.
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i have some pretty glaring issues with this guide as a masters zerg on NA (also offer coaching occasionally) your advocating not scouting before gold? no tech till gold? bronze and silver known for having very common cheese play and ur telling people to not scout? if they dont see it coming they lose 99.9% of the time especially at that level. only ling roach is alittle bit bad... especially if ur not geting upgrades. not spreading overlords to watch for drops? how is a bronze player supposed to defend if they dont at least have warning.
while i understand what ur trying to do i think you are grossly underestimating alot of important aspects of the game and overestimating macro. u honestly cant just 1a with ling roach as zerg and ever win if ur opponent is either A being defensive or B has a good counter army (for example zerg with banes and roaches if u 1a into that ur gona lose with just ling roach 100% of the time) starcraft is too complex of a game to simplify the game down as much as you have in this guide. if a new player follows ur guide he will actually never break silver get past gold level. he will get demoted before he is able to learn the "new" parts of the game once he finally breaks into gold. in SC, the ability to multitask is the best thing to learn. Learn to macro and learn to multitask instead of just learning to macro u have to learn to do it while still playing the game. learning to macro should be done in custom games against the computer (if ur goal is to actually develop as a player and to get better).
you actually shouldnt be looking at ur base much at all in a game of sc2 the more u look at ur base the worse ur doing everything else base vision should only be to build depots/production/tech buildings and injects/chronos/mules. the rest of ur macro really should be done with hotkeys while ur posturing ur army around the map, scouting for drops/expandsions, or just controlling areas of the map. you can not just stare at ur base and learn proper mechanics u just learn how to build shit and die to alot of stuff.
your guide's major flaw is it starts by teaching bad habits (1a'ing, staring at base, not scouting, not doing proper builds, not learning unit control.) these things are to hard to break. when if first started playing zerg i would never hotkey my queens for injects while i still progress from diamond to masters i eventually hit a wall and had to spend 4-5 weeks forcing myself to learn to hotkey my queens and use them. this guide is great in theory, teach them to focus on important macro stuff, and gradually ad more as they progress but the problem is its realistic and not a practical way to get better.
i like the idea of your guide but i just dont think its the best way to learn starcraft
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On June 12 2012 04:56 Tevian wrote: Building pylons as Zerg? What?
Thanks for analyzing my mistakes without knowing my play though.
And once again you just assume a FFE toss will just do nothing and let you macro till 8 minutes and just let you hit 200/200 at 12 minutes. I simply don't get how you assume that 6/7 gates are just that easy to hold off. What if it hits you at 8:15 or even earlier? Well at least you have perfect saturation. What if he hits you with 3 or 4 Zealots and a probe at 7:30? That is usually the problem in the lower leagues, random stuff will just hit you, and a lot of people tend to overreact (like building 8 lings or a spine at your third and nat each), of course they won't hit 70 supply at 8:00.
Even a silver player should be able to hit 200/200 at 12 minutes given no pressure at all, the 12 minutes max is just that terribly easy. That is assuming you don't get pylon blocked at natural and 3rd. I don't see how taking a third is any harder than just dealing with two bases, then going for some whatever build, and then taking the third. You just expand one more time? Let's not even talk about this build requiring any high apm. It doesn't. It requires coordination, which the examples you mentioned lacked completely.
If you can't manage expanding once more and then just hitting injects/building roaches/lings, you most likely can't handle FFE with just 2 bases too.
We should stop throwing bronze in with gold though, the difference between those leagues is huge. I wasn't even going to argue with you about that build, all I ever tried to say is the things you want people to focus on are required to not get kicked out of the respective leagues.
Alright my friend.First off I'd like to note that it was you who said, "It is ridiculous to assume that anyone in gold or even lower will hit max at 12 minutes. Completely without being pylon blocked and rushed, maybe. " I thought by pylon blocked you meant supply blocked. Even then, I get pylon blocked every game my friend. Simply do this build: 15 pool, 18 2pairs of lings, 21 hatch, 21 hatch. Boom, you won't ever get pylon blocked again because your lings kill it and you're still just fine in your macro.
The funny thing is, you are saying things like "you just assume a FFE toss will just do nothing and let you macro till 8 minutes and just let you hit 200/200 at 12 minutes" and "What if he hits you with 3 or 4 Zealots and a probe at 7:30?" as if I don't understand these things and in reality it is impossible to hit 70 supply at 8 minutes because clearly my league is easy and only in your league can players pull out great timings with hard stuff to deal with.
I'm not trying to be rude, but in Masters league the 1000+ pt protoss players that I play are a LOT better than any protoss player you have ever played, and thus their 6/7 gates hit MUCH harder. Not only can I hold a 6/7 gate you have never had a chance to even play against before, but I can do it and still reach my benchmarks. I'm not asking gold level players to beat a masters protoss 6/7 gate (That would require some actual unit micro and a lot more apm), I'm asking them to hold off a gold level 6/7 gate (which over the course of my coaching I have witnessed numerous times and let me tell you it can be beaten without scouting and just straight up macro.
As for taking a 3rd, it is very different because 2 bases requires only a certain amount of ground to cover while a 3rd base doubles the space needed to be defended plus it adds more everything. Sit down and write out all of the 1 base builds. Now write out all of the ways you expand upon that once you can go to 2 bases (it should grow exponentially), now write out all of the ways you expand upon that once you go to 3 bases, 4 bases, etc. More bases, More resources, More ground, More decisions. It's something you have to learn by taking steps 1 at a time. You don't train for a marathon by running workouts you can't handle. You start easy, build up your conditioning, and eventually you work your way up to those intense workouts.
I'm all open for discussion, but please don't come in here shouting off nonsense about the difficulties of gold that I've clearly never faced in Masters League.
On June 12 2012 06:38 psychotics wrote: i have some pretty glaring issues with this guide as a masters zerg on NA (also offer coaching occasionally) your advocating not scouting before gold? no tech till gold? bronze and silver known for having very common cheese play and ur telling people to not scout? if they dont see it coming they lose 99.9% of the time especially at that level. only ling roach is alittle bit bad... especially if ur not geting upgrades. not spreading overlords to watch for drops? how is a bronze player supposed to defend if they dont at least have warning.
while i understand what ur trying to do i think you are grossly underestimating alot of important aspects of the game and overestimating macro. u honestly cant just 1a with ling roach as zerg and ever win if ur opponent is either A being defensive or B has a good counter army (for example zerg with banes and roaches if u 1a into that ur gona lose with just ling roach 100% of the time) starcraft is too complex of a game to simplify the game down as much as you have in this guide. if a new player follows ur guide he will actually never break silver get past gold level. he will get demoted before he is able to learn the "new" parts of the game once he finally breaks into gold. in SC, the ability to multitask is the best thing to learn. Learn to macro and learn to multitask instead of just learning to macro u have to learn to do it while still playing the game. learning to macro should be done in custom games against the computer (if ur goal is to actually develop as a player and to get better).
you actually shouldnt be looking at ur base much at all in a game of sc2 the more u look at ur base the worse ur doing everything else base vision should only be to build depots/production/tech buildings and injects/chronos/mules. the rest of ur macro really should be done with hotkeys while ur posturing ur army around the map, scouting for drops/expandsions, or just controlling areas of the map. you can not just stare at ur base and learn proper mechanics u just learn how to build shit and die to alot of stuff.
your guide's major flaw is it starts by teaching bad habits (1a'ing, staring at base, not scouting, not doing proper builds, not learning unit control.) these things are to hard to break. when if first started playing zerg i would never hotkey my queens for injects while i still progress from diamond to masters i eventually hit a wall and had to spend 4-5 weeks forcing myself to learn to hotkey my queens and use them. this guide is great in theory, teach them to focus on important macro stuff, and gradually ad more as they progress but the problem is its realistic and not a practical way to get better.
i like the idea of your guide but i just dont think its the best way to learn starcraft
I understand what you're saying but I think you are thinking in terms of a masters player too much. Of course in Masters league I rarely look at my base besides when I need to build a building or inject, but at a lower level this simply is foolish because they will get way too caught up in their units and their macro will fail, hard. Go watch bz-gold players and see that everytime they have units selected and are moving them around, they are making absolutely nothing back home. I've seen this go on for MINUTES while they micro an army vs another army. The point is, had they just been working on their macro the entire time, they would actually have more units than they saved trying to micro
I think I'm going to also recommend you to go watch FilterSC on youtube. The dude will literally build a CC, make about 10 barracks, and make marines. Then he will 1A marines right at his opponents base (straight into banelings too, no micro allowed) and still absolutely crush his opponent because the sheer number of units overwhelms them.
And I do advocate the use of hotkeys. Hotkey your queens, your production facilities, and your army. I never said anything about not hotkeying queens because that is actually a very important part of your macro.
one big quote that you said is "if they dont see it coming they lose 99.9% of the time especially at that level"
The point is, I'm trying to get them out of that level. I think the reason they stick in that level is because they don't have a good base and instead are focused on just scouting for everything all the time and getting the fancy infestor broodlord army or whatever. Build your macro, you build your base, all of the sudden you can handle a lot more because you have a lot more.
I agree you need to learn to multitask AND Macro, but if you can't do 1 of them alone, what good is it to try and do both at the same time? Juggling and riding a unicycle would be awesome to do at the same time, but if I can't even juggle, why should I bother trying to do it while riding a unicycle? I'm never going to learn it at that rate (or it will take me forever).
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i think you missed my main point was that learning proper macro is about learning to mulitask, the actual learning of building probes and pylons constantly producing and all should be done and mastered before even going on the ladder. im just saying teaching bad mechanics in order to have better macro isnt how to get better at the game. i also said i agree with ur idea but disagree with how you do it. make ur bronze players scout with a probe but have them just run into the base click the oppenents main nexus and run back, this way they are still used to the action of scouting but just taking it slowly. make them use thier hotkeys to produce units while watching their army teach them the feel of proper mechanics early just staring at the base all game is a breeding ground for bad habits (ie boxing queens to inject instead of hotkeys, or clicking on barracks instead of the hotkey) im saying ur guide is just to simple for a player that is actually trying to get better at the game and anyone whos not isnt going to have fun playing like this anyways and probally doesnt even care. FliterSC 1aing marines into banes and winning is cool and all but really relevant. what im saying is that ur cutting out too much of the game for lower leagues which will hinder their growth in the long run
to go off ur juggling metaphor, what im saying is learn to juggle one ball then learn to do it while on a unicycle then learn 2 balls on the unicycle if that makes sense?
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I've gotta say, I agree with MrLlama as a lowbie player. I made it to plat league once, took a long break and am now solidly a silver league player as I try to get back into SC2.
Thing is, I still have the knowledge from when I used to play at a plat level, and occasionally when I'm really on a roll I can at least get the macro back that I used to have. I can't multitask when macroing like that, I can ONLY macro.
I had a game recently against T on Cloud Kingdom where I just made ling bane on 3 base, and my apm was so low that that macro was consuming all my attention, I even forgot really key upgrades like ling and bane speed.
I tried a bit of muta harass, it failed because I couldn't pay attention to the mutas, and I just 1a'd my troops into the terran. I CRUSHED him. It was completely one-sided. Slow lings and slow banes, off creep, and I rolled through his army, through his nat full of bunkers, and into his main without really slowing down.
Why? Because I had been hitting my injects with about a 6 sec gap between them on 3 bases (according to SC2 gears) and keeping up with droning and making units, not getting supply blocked.
He had marines w/ combat shield, +1 attack (and maybe armor?), stim, marauders w/ concussive shell, the works. If he'd had anything near my supply he would have destroyed me, but I had something like 3 times his supply so I just rolled him.
I'm going to keep practicing that macro, and work on getting my APM up to the point that I can actually do stuff outside my base while keeping that up, and I think I'll be in a good place. Seeing this thread confirmed that for me, and I think it was good, league-appropriate advice.
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Nice guide. By the way as Terran, you don't need to add multi-prong attacks until master league. It's possible to use solid builds and just rely on good engagements to win without doing a single drop.
Also you should note that you should keep working on mechanics in Master league. Even in masters people float money, far more than people would expect.
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On June 12 2012 07:20 psychotics wrote: i think you missed my main point was that learning proper macro is about learning to mulitask, the actual learning of building probes and pylons constantly producing and all should be done and mastered before even going on the ladder. im just saying teaching bad mechanics in order to have better macro isnt how to get better at the game. i also said i agree with ur idea but disagree with how you do it. make ur bronze players scout with a probe but have them just run into the base click the oppenents main nexus and run back, this way they are still used to the action of scouting but just taking it slowly. make them use thier hotkeys to produce units while watching their army teach them the feel of proper mechanics early just staring at the base all game is a breeding ground for bad habits (ie boxing queens to inject instead of hotkeys, or clicking on barracks instead of the hotkey) im saying ur guide is just to simple for a player that is actually trying to get better at the game and anyone whos not isnt going to have fun playing like this anyways and probally doesnt even care. FliterSC 1aing marines into banes and winning is cool and all but really relevant. what im saying is that ur cutting out too much of the game for lower leagues which will hinder their growth in the long run
to go off ur juggling metaphor, what im saying is learn to juggle one ball then learn to do it while on a unicycle then learn 2 balls on the unicycle if that makes sense?
I get what you're saying but I think Drascus really proves the point I'm making. Multitasking is good but learn to multitask by making pylons, building probes, and making units on time (use your hotkeys but it really helps if at first you can see all of the buildings as they are good reminders). Example: sometimes in masters I'll forget to upgrade baneling speed for a little bit. If I was ever just watching my base, I would see my baneling nest and it would remind me to get baneling speed. If a zerg is watching his base and sees the larva moving, it can remind him to not have larva and to spend it. If instead he is out of his base watching his scout drone or a moving overlords around for spread or watching an engagement, he is going to get caught up in that and simply forget at least 1 thing back home that he could have done if he were just watching and making sure. Eventually you can wean yourself off of this and that's why I say as you move up leagues you should slowly start to make these changes, but starting out trying to do too much is killer, and I think for a bronze level player even sending the worker to the base and back is 1 too many actions (plus it hurts their macro because that guy isn't mining minerals and then they are worrying about scouting timings and the sort).
On June 12 2012 08:56 Fencer710 wrote: Nice guide. By the way as Terran, you don't need to add multi-prong attacks until master league. It's possible to use solid builds and just rely on good engagements to win without doing a single drop.
Also you should note that you should keep working on mechanics in Master league. Even in masters people float money, far more than people would expect.
Yeah I think you can be right there. I just feel like by diamond league your APM should be at the point where you can shift click a drop to the back of their base and then focus on pushing at the front. At this level there is a decent amount of variability and I think you should only try and reach the next goal if you are doing everything else beforehand.
And yes to the masters thing (yes x1000). This is why I say start at the bronze goals and work your way up from there, no matter what league you are in. So many masters players float money or get supply blocked a lot or do too much worker harass and miss building timings and it's all unnecessary and self-damaging if you can't take care of everything back home.
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I like the points you brought up.
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Yeah I think you can be right there. I just feel like by diamond league your APM should be at the point where you can shift click a drop to the back of their base and then focus on pushing at the front. At this level there is a decent amount of variability and I think you should only try and reach the next goal if you are doing everything else beforehand. I think you can definitely get in the habit of setting your hotkeys up for a drop, just remember that that usually doesn't work against an opponent on few bases, and you will often lose the drop for little to nothing if it flies into a bunch of static defence.
Another thing you should note that I figured out recently, is that with a strong mid-game timing push you can easily win games up to high diamond without the push being all-in, and you can easily take a third and later on a fourth behind it as well as adding on a ton more production.
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It would really help if the bronze-diamond leaguers accepted suggestions from high masters players and not argue about it.
It's like if you're in school and trying to tell your math teacher about math and what you think is right.
Listen. Please. Just listen. Accept it. Do it.
Phoenix was high masters and even GM in Korea building ONLY lings and drones. He crushed Archon Zealot comps with it because he had fucking amazing macro. He virtually never even scouted because it just didn't matter. So please listen to advice from people better than you. Yes, your opinion matters, but your opinion only matters if you have a clue about what you're talking about. Probably the masters player is right, dear gold leaguers. Just probably.
If you spend your ressources (including larvae), take expansions, saturate bases early, and build tons of stuff and it still doesn't work for you in gold losing 50%+ of your games, come back here. You won't, I promise. (And please do look at your replays and look if you really did.)
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On June 12 2012 08:46 Drascus wrote: I've gotta say, I agree with MrLlama as a lowbie player. I made it to plat league once, took a long break and am now solidly a silver league player as I try to get back into SC2.
Thing is, I still have the knowledge from when I used to play at a plat level, and occasionally when I'm really on a roll I can at least get the macro back that I used to have. I can't multitask when macroing like that, I can ONLY macro.
I had a game recently against T on Cloud Kingdom where I just made ling bane on 3 base, and my apm was so low that that macro was consuming all my attention, I even forgot really key upgrades like ling and bane speed.
I tried a bit of muta harass, it failed because I couldn't pay attention to the mutas, and I just 1a'd my troops into the terran. I CRUSHED him. It was completely one-sided. Slow lings and slow banes, off creep, and I rolled through his army, through his nat full of bunkers, and into his main without really slowing down.
Why? Because I had been hitting my injects with about a 6 sec gap between them on 3 bases (according to SC2 gears) and keeping up with droning and making units, not getting supply blocked.
He had marines w/ combat shield, +1 attack (and maybe armor?), stim, marauders w/ concussive shell, the works. If he'd had anything near my supply he would have destroyed me, but I had something like 3 times his supply so I just rolled him.
I'm going to keep practicing that macro, and work on getting my APM up to the point that I can actually do stuff outside my base while keeping that up, and I think I'll be in a good place. Seeing this thread confirmed that for me, and I think it was good, league-appropriate advice.
I agree with this. As a bronze with no rts experience, this advice helped me quite a bit. Trying to emulate pros is great and all, but laying a solid macro foundation is much much more important. I'm winning like 75% of my games now simply because I'm way ahead on supply, just like Drascus said. Thanks for the quide.
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Definitely appreciated, especially the race specific stuff.
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I don't know. If I give back story in season 1 and 2 I worked my way from bronze to diamond as Protoss in season 1 and season 2 I was bronze. I learned to make probes, scout etc.. got up to 1400 pts in diamond.
I stopped playing until about a month ago and started as Zerg this season. I got placed in silver demoted to bronze and I'm now high silver playing mostly golds.
Now I gotta say the difference between season 1 and 2 and now the caliber of lower level players is better. Back in season 1 anyone trying to learn was always told to scout make workers I can't see why now you wouldn't say the samething. Everyone was basically 1 base all ins season 1 and 2. Zergs where mutalinging like no tomorrow in ZvP. Terrans where 3 raxing, Protoss was 4 gate wars.
I just think unit composition is really important and you have to know that by scouting basic info. It's not hard to 13 drone scout shift click around a base and go back to yours to macro letting your drone die by being idle. I pylon in the main with a gate and cyber and one at the natural with a forge is huge.
Your preparing for a 630-7min 4 gate to hit you or a 9:30ish 6-7 gate.
I think at least scouting is doable in silver and bronze IMO.
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On June 12 2012 23:42 oZii wrote: I don't know. If I give back story in season 1 and 2 I worked my way from bronze to diamond as Protoss in season 1 and season 2 I was bronze. I learned to make probes, scout etc.. got up to 1400 pts in diamond.
I stopped playing until about a month ago and started as Zerg this season. I got placed in silver demoted to bronze and I'm now high silver playing mostly golds.
Now I gotta say the difference between season 1 and 2 and now the caliber of lower level players is better. Back in season 1 anyone trying to learn was always told to scout make workers I can't see why now you wouldn't say the samething. Everyone was basically 1 base all ins season 1 and 2. Zergs where mutalinging like no tomorrow in ZvP. Terrans where 3 raxing, Protoss was 4 gate wars.
I just think unit composition is really important and you have to know that by scouting basic info. It's not hard to 13 drone scout shift click around a base and go back to yours to macro letting your drone die by being idle. I pylon in the main with a gate and cyber and one at the natural with a forge is huge.
Your preparing for a 630-7min 4 gate to hit you or a 9:30ish 6-7 gate.
I think at least scouting is doable in silver and bronze IMO.
Or at least you should leave a single unit at the nearest watchtower, and a single unit parked outside their base during that whole, "No rush because we're terrible and trying to macro" stage of the lower leagues.
Then you can see right away when he moves out (if you look at the minimap).
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On June 12 2012 23:42 oZii wrote: I don't know. If I give back story in season 1 and 2 I worked my way from bronze to diamond as Protoss in season 1 and season 2 I was bronze. I learned to make probes, scout etc.. got up to 1400 pts in diamond.
I stopped playing until about a month ago and started as Zerg this season. I got placed in silver demoted to bronze and I'm now high silver playing mostly golds.
Now I gotta say the difference between season 1 and 2 and now the caliber of lower level players is better. Back in season 1 anyone trying to learn was always told to scout make workers I can't see why now you wouldn't say the samething. Everyone was basically 1 base all ins season 1 and 2. Zergs where mutalinging like no tomorrow in ZvP. Terrans where 3 raxing, Protoss was 4 gate wars.
I just think unit composition is really important and you have to know that by scouting basic info. It's not hard to 13 drone scout shift click around a base and go back to yours to macro letting your drone die by being idle. I pylon in the main with a gate and cyber and one at the natural with a forge is huge.
Your preparing for a 630-7min 4 gate to hit you or a 9:30ish 6-7 gate.
I think at least scouting is doable in silver and bronze IMO.
I get this, I really do. But the past 2 replays that I have watched for my stream of silver league players, both of them scouted a Forge fast expand and threw down a spine crawler. Not only that, but one of them threw down a roach warren, made roaches and lings, and started preparing for a 4gate it looked like.
A lot of players can't identify builds at this stage and I don't think they should even waste the time trying to. Sit at home and macro your butt off (and throw down a couple spinecrawlers if ya want, your macro should be miles ahead of your opponent).
The reason I say don't scout to prepare for the 4gate or the 6/7 gate is because if you are just on 2 bases (I don't recommend the fast 3rd yet in bronze/silver vs a FFE unless you are playing way above your level with awesome macro), you should be able to hold either one with just stellar macro. Throw down 2 spinecrawlers blind and then if he tries to hit you with a 4gate you can have a bit of time to react and get some units out. If he goes for the 6/7 gate that won't come until 8:15+ (probably later) in which case you will have moved out of droning (I'd say about around 55 drones or so) and into units with your spines so you have a good chance of defending it.
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On June 13 2012 00:14 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2012 23:42 oZii wrote: I don't know. If I give back story in season 1 and 2 I worked my way from bronze to diamond as Protoss in season 1 and season 2 I was bronze. I learned to make probes, scout etc.. got up to 1400 pts in diamond.
I stopped playing until about a month ago and started as Zerg this season. I got placed in silver demoted to bronze and I'm now high silver playing mostly golds.
Now I gotta say the difference between season 1 and 2 and now the caliber of lower level players is better. Back in season 1 anyone trying to learn was always told to scout make workers I can't see why now you wouldn't say the samething. Everyone was basically 1 base all ins season 1 and 2. Zergs where mutalinging like no tomorrow in ZvP. Terrans where 3 raxing, Protoss was 4 gate wars.
I just think unit composition is really important and you have to know that by scouting basic info. It's not hard to 13 drone scout shift click around a base and go back to yours to macro letting your drone die by being idle. I pylon in the main with a gate and cyber and one at the natural with a forge is huge.
Your preparing for a 630-7min 4 gate to hit you or a 9:30ish 6-7 gate.
I think at least scouting is doable in silver and bronze IMO. I get this, I really do. But the past 2 replays that I have watched for my stream of silver league players, both of them scouted a Forge fast expand and threw down a spine crawler. Not only that, but one of them threw down a roach warren, made roaches and lings, and started preparing for a 4gate it looked like. A lot of players can't identify builds at this stage and I don't think they should even waste the time trying to. Sit at home and macro your butt off (and throw down a couple spinecrawlers if ya want, your macro should be miles ahead of your opponent). The reason I say don't scout to prepare for the 4gate or the 6/7 gate is because if you are just on 2 bases (I don't recommend the fast 3rd yet in bronze/silver vs a FFE unless you are playing way above your level with awesome macro), you should be able to hold either one with just stellar macro. Throw down 2 spinecrawlers blind and then if he tries to hit you with a 4gate you can have a bit of time to react and get some units out. If he goes for the 6/7 gate that won't come until 8:15+ (probably later) in which case you will have moved out of droning (I'd say about around 55 drones or so) and into units with your spines so you have a good chance of defending it.
I always try to look at both sides in a discussion so I see what your saying also. I do agree with you in terms of zerg its about drone numbers more so than food counts like toss and terran. That was difficult for me to grasp as its not so much about grabbing a build and going with and more in your base you actually do have to worry about. I will give your method a try I have been doing practice maps on my own just making drones microing a single drone around and injecting to get faster and help multi task. I dont get hung up on ladder I rather have a good foundation as I learn zerg. So Ill give this technique a go and just macro focus on injects and creep and just make lings and roaches doesnt hurt to try your method to see how it works
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Good post! The only thing I might say is that coming from a silver protoss, it can be helpful to scout in lower leagues on a basic level. For example you either scout or dont scout a 6 pool, which is quite common in bsg.
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Love it! Haven't read a lot of breakdowns that get that specific about what skills to focus on at each level.
Really well done. Thanks a lot! =]
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On June 12 2012 20:53 Mahtasooma wrote: <...> If you spend your ressources (including larvae), take expansions, saturate bases early, and build tons of stuff and it still doesn't work for you in gold losing 50%+ of your games, come back here. You won't, I promise. (And please do look at your replays and look if you really did.)
See my replay on page 2 (post 36). Granted I'm Platinum, but my opponent was Gold so your hypothetical Gold player could end up playing him.
That said, I generally agree with you - I pretty much followed this advice and it was enough to get me out of Gold and into Platinum, where I've stalled. Now I have Plat level macro (sometimes better) and Bronze level engagements, as you can see from the replay. MrLlama says I need to improve them to advance (I agree) and that it will be easier for me than improving both macro and engagements at the same time. Maybe it will be, but I can't help but feel that it would have been a less frustrating process if I'd given them some more attention before now. The replay I posted is nothing special or unusual - I played countless games like it in Silver and Gold where I 1A-ed a bigger army at my opponent and lost it all for little or no return. At the time it was obvious that my biggest problem in those particular games was not macro, and it frustrated me that when I looked at threads like this one I was being advised not to fix it. I followed the advice anyway and it eventually worked, to the extent that I had such a macro advantage over other Gold players that it offset some pretty major flaws in the rest of my game. However, I do feel like I'm behind in learning some other fundamental skills. To that extent I agree with a lot of the points raised by psychotics (page 4 of the thread).
The thing I like about the Platinum section of MrLlama's guide is that he states that Platinum players need to do more than just improve their macro to advance. That's quite unusual to see in threads like this, where the prevailing view is usually that if you're below Diamond, your problem is macro and you shouldn't bother about everything else. I always found this frustrating because I felt like my issues with engagements (for example) were so bad that no amount of macro superiority was going to compensate, at least in Platinum. So I would spend a while working on my engagements and my macro would drop off. Then I'd read posts like yours, feel guilty that I was second-guessing Masters advice, forget about engagements again and go back to macroing. It hasn't been working very well, but I wasn't sure if that was because I was right about needing more than macro, or because I was wrong and had been allowing myself to get distracted from the proper improvement approach.
Based on this thread I have a simple short-term goal: improve my engagements against all races while keeping the same or better level of macro. I still lose games due to macro so I don't want to let that slide, but I can generally tell from the replays or even the post-game stats screen which was which. I feel like this addresses the main problems I've been having and is simple enough for me to work on effectively.
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On June 13 2012 08:00 oZii wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On June 13 2012 00:14 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On June 12 2012 23:42 oZii wrote: I don't know. If I give back story in season 1 and 2 I worked my way from bronze to diamond as Protoss in season 1 and season 2 I was bronze. I learned to make probes, scout etc.. got up to 1400 pts in diamond.
I stopped playing until about a month ago and started as Zerg this season. I got placed in silver demoted to bronze and I'm now high silver playing mostly golds.
Now I gotta say the difference between season 1 and 2 and now the caliber of lower level players is better. Back in season 1 anyone trying to learn was always told to scout make workers I can't see why now you wouldn't say the samething. Everyone was basically 1 base all ins season 1 and 2. Zergs where mutalinging like no tomorrow in ZvP. Terrans where 3 raxing, Protoss was 4 gate wars.
I just think unit composition is really important and you have to know that by scouting basic info. It's not hard to 13 drone scout shift click around a base and go back to yours to macro letting your drone die by being idle. I pylon in the main with a gate and cyber and one at the natural with a forge is huge.
Your preparing for a 630-7min 4 gate to hit you or a 9:30ish 6-7 gate.
I think at least scouting is doable in silver and bronze IMO. I get this, I really do. But the past 2 replays that I have watched for my stream of silver league players, both of them scouted a Forge fast expand and threw down a spine crawler. Not only that, but one of them threw down a roach warren, made roaches and lings, and started preparing for a 4gate it looked like. A lot of players can't identify builds at this stage and I don't think they should even waste the time trying to. Sit at home and macro your butt off (and throw down a couple spinecrawlers if ya want, your macro should be miles ahead of your opponent). The reason I say don't scout to prepare for the 4gate or the 6/7 gate is because if you are just on 2 bases (I don't recommend the fast 3rd yet in bronze/silver vs a FFE unless you are playing way above your level with awesome macro), you should be able to hold either one with just stellar macro. Throw down 2 spinecrawlers blind and then if he tries to hit you with a 4gate you can have a bit of time to react and get some units out. If he goes for the 6/7 gate that won't come until 8:15+ (probably later) in which case you will have moved out of droning (I'd say about around 55 drones or so) and into units with your spines so you have a good chance of defending it. I always try to look at both sides in a discussion so I see what your saying also. I do agree with you in terms of zerg its about drone numbers more so than food counts like toss and terran. That was difficult for me to grasp as its not so much about grabbing a build and going with and more in your base you actually do have to worry about. I will give your method a try I have been doing practice maps on my own just making drones microing a single drone around and injecting to get faster and help multi task. I dont get hung up on ladder I rather have a good foundation as I learn zerg. So Ill give this technique a go and just macro focus on injects and creep and just make lings and roaches doesnt hurt to try your method to see how it works
I mentioned it a couple times before, but yes zerg is much harder to grasp because of the way the race works. If you're a terran and you have 60 supply by X minutes, you're doing well. If you're a zerg and you have that, well how much of it is drones? How much energy is on your queens? What about your expansions/macro hatches since that's where you get larva? It is just a lot different and has it's own unique challenges. And the problem is I can't say "Make units and drones constantly" because that's not how the race works. To a terran I can say "make scvs and marines nonstop" and it's fine but zerg is all about knowing WHEN to get drones. The problem is, as a bronze-silver league player I don't want them to even worry about that yet because they are still in the process of floating money and larva and not making anything. Of all 3 races, zergs trying this will probably lose the most but they will also learn a lot about their race and start to really develop the high level mentality of good times to drone, good times to build units, etc.
On June 13 2012 08:18 AnonymousEmu wrote: Good post! The only thing I might say is that coming from a silver protoss, it can be helpful to scout in lower leagues on a basic level. For example you either scout or dont scout a 6 pool, which is quite common in bsg.
Sure I can understand that, but half the people I know who have scouted a 6 pool either spent too much time watching their scout unit in the base to where they forgot to wall off/build stuff back home to protect them or they never even checked the scout so it didn't matter.
On June 13 2012 08:28 Chutoro wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On June 12 2012 20:53 Mahtasooma wrote: <...> If you spend your ressources (including larvae), take expansions, saturate bases early, and build tons of stuff and it still doesn't work for you in gold losing 50%+ of your games, come back here. You won't, I promise. (And please do look at your replays and look if you really did.)
See my replay on page 2 (post 36). Granted I'm Platinum, but my opponent was Gold so your hypothetical Gold player could end up playing him. That said, I generally agree with you - I pretty much followed this advice and it was enough to get me out of Gold and into Platinum, where I've stalled. Now I have Plat level macro (sometimes better) and Bronze level engagements, as you can see from the replay. MrLlama says I need to improve them to advance (I agree) and that it will be easier for me than improving both macro and engagements at the same time. Maybe it will be, but I can't help but feel that it would have been a less frustrating process if I'd given them some more attention before now. The replay I posted is nothing special or unusual - I played countless games like it in Silver and Gold where I 1A-ed a bigger army at my opponent and lost it all for little or no return. At the time it was obvious that my biggest problem in those particular games was not macro, and it frustrated me that when I looked at threads like this one I was being advised not to fix it. I followed the advice anyway and it eventually worked, to the extent that I had such a macro advantage over other Gold players that it offset some pretty major flaws in the rest of my game. However, I do feel like I'm behind in learning some other fundamental skills. To that extent I agree with a lot of the points raised by psychotics (page 4 of the thread). The thing I like about the Platinum section of MrLlama's guide is that he states that Platinum players need to do more than just improve their macro to advance. That's quite unusual to see in threads like this, where the prevailing view is usually that if you're below Diamond, your problem is macro and you shouldn't bother about everything else. I always found this frustrating because I felt like my issues with engagements (for example) were so bad that no amount of macro superiority was going to compensate, at least in Platinum. So I would spend a while working on my engagements and my macro would drop off. Then I'd read posts like yours, feel guilty that I was second-guessing Masters advice, forget about engagements again and go back to macroing. It hasn't been working very well, but I wasn't sure if that was because I was right about needing more than macro, or because I was wrong and had been allowing myself to get distracted from the proper improvement approach. Based on this thread I have a simple short-term goal: improve my engagements against all races while keeping the same or better level of macro. I still lose games due to macro so I don't want to let that slide, but I can generally tell from the replays or even the post-game stats screen which was which. I feel like this addresses the main problems I've been having and is simple enough for me to work on effectively.
I would like to highlight the best thing I think someone has said in this thread so far.
"Based on this thread I have a simple short-term goal: improve my engagements against all races while keeping the same or better level of macro. I still lose games due to macro so I don't want to let that slide, but I can generally tell from the replays or even the post-game stats screen which was which. I feel like this addresses the main problems I've been having and is simple enough for me to work on effectively."
This is how you improve in starcraft 2. keep everything the same and just set ONE more goal at a time.
Everybody simply tries to do too much. They want to scout and macro and blink their stalkers and counter with zealots to the third and get a deathball and it's so many things that they just get all messed up and miss out on the important things like making probes and pylons and warping in units every cycle they can.
your goal is perfect. Keep that great macro, and then the next time you are engaging for a battle, use 5 more apm to send half of your army around to the side for a good surrounding engagement. Then back to your macro.
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Great work, I really like the philosophy and your clearly articulated advice.
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Nice write-up. I teach in a very similar fashion :D
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Thanks guys, glad the article was able to help you
just an update on where I've been since I wrote this article and got back to my roots
Last season: ended with a 13-3 with a 13 win streak in there (followed by 3 awful losses )
This season so far: 9-1
Stick to taking care of yourself and you'll do great!
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I think you should put rough APM estimates per league as well. I'm gold right now but my winrate is almost 100% (maybe lose 1 game out of every 15, and usually I just slipped somewhere), and I'd feel comfortable playing how you describe Platinum or even Diamond.
That said, even at gold league, researching hallucination for scouting and making imaginary colossi help a lot. It doesn't even get in the way of macro. Send phoenix, take a look, go back, macro. Before engaging him, C-C-C-C for 2 meatshields which he may or may not focus fire, a-move, go back, macro.
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On June 17 2012 10:57 [UoN]Sentinel wrote: I think you should put rough APM estimates per league as well. I'm gold right now but my winrate is almost 100% (maybe lose 1 game out of every 15, and usually I just slipped somewhere), and I'd feel comfortable playing how you describe Platinum or even Diamond.
That said, even at gold league, researching hallucination for scouting and making imaginary colossi help a lot. It doesn't even get in the way of macro. Send phoenix, take a look, go back, macro. Before engaging him, C-C-C-C for 2 meatshields which he may or may not focus fire, a-move, go back, macro.
if you are winning with a ratio over 90%, it's most likely you are much better than a gold player. If you are handling everything up to gold league, feel free to add in the platinum stuff and then diamond stuff if possible (in which case the things you say are things you should be working on right now).
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This is a great post. I got training from a masters player in season 1 when I was bronze. Basically I learned what you posted: Prioritize your actions.
Once I realized this I climbed the ranks and got to masters in season 5. Seriously, the more you can just straight up macro and do basic unit movements (pulling back if youre in a bad position, using unit abilities like stim and storm), it will become almost second hand and feel natural that you find yourself able to do more, thus a higher APM.
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This is all pretty true, if you're in lower leagues you should only focus on macro pretty much and you'll win games. It doesn't really hurt to micro your units though, it's good practice for when you're in higher leagues and it's just more fun to do than macro. But if you're actually struggling to get out of those lower leagues, then this really should help.
Even focusing solely on macro while aomoving your army via the minimap can be great practice to get used to macro being the top priority.
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On June 17 2012 12:35 Chronos. wrote: This is all pretty true, if you're in lower leagues you should only focus on macro pretty much and you'll win games. It doesn't really hurt to micro your units though, it's good practice for when you're in higher leagues and it's just more fun to do than macro. But if you're actually struggling to get out of those lower leagues, then this really should help.
Even focusing solely on macro while aomoving your army via the minimap can be great practice to get used to macro being the top priority.
Yeah and I think a big reason people don't see this is because of camera focus.
When you get to masters league, your camera is focused on your army 80-90% of the time. Lower league players interpret this as "I should focus on my army 80-90% of the time" when in reality higher level players just get all of their macro done in a few seconds and with hotkeys since it is the most important thing, and then spend their extra time working on unit micro.
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http://drop.sc/packs/1114
Okay y'all.
I first played a game online maybe about 10 days ago. I've probably played about 30 or so games online total... Playing offline I think was a waste of time. Playing online all the time even if I'm just practicing a technique helps to make it less stressful. Guess I've got nothing to lose unlike some of you.
As mentioned above, the first 10 or so games I just got my ass handed to me. Badly.
Around that time I figured out how to save replays. This is low bronze league stuff. Here's some examples.
+ Show Spoiler +
By the way, I know that I'm fucking awful still, so keep that in mind if you look at the replays...
In the game vs. SHODAN, I was constantly dicking around with my units and trying to be WhiteRa or something. As you can see that didn't work out very well.
After reading Llama's thread here, I started winning a bunch of games.
Then, something bad happened, vs Blaze. Around the 19 minute mark I finally move out. (After that, don't even bother watching unless you just want to laugh at how bad we suck.) I'm doing my crappy-ass macro, but at least I'm... mostly focusing on it. I get up a ton of stuff and basically A-move. All my stuff gets slaughtered. Why? He's all turtled up with siege tanks and I have a ball of stalkers. I think this is the kind of thing that is making people go say 'you can't just A-move', and made me a little sad. I mean, I was a good boy and focused on my macro and way out-macro-ed him, shouldn't I get a win? :<
That kind of thing has led me to pushing out a little earlier as I did in the last game vs BadJuJu. Then, if I can tell they're turtling up in a certain way, I can at least come up with some simple counter before rolling out.
The main thing I wanted to contribute other than some examples of how this really changed my approach, was that lately I've decided I just don't have the APM/attention to build 1 probe at a time. So, I've decided there's no harm in doing 2 at a time once the game is rolling. I mean, I'm only floating 50 extra minerals. When everything is settled, after doing a warp in, checking my robo/stargate, and queuing up 2 probes at each Nexus, I'm left with a little bit of free time with which to move a unit or two out using the minimap and check out what's up, or expand, or build an upgrade... I think it's really increased my probe output overall with very little drawbacks...
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On June 17 2012 18:56 jodeci wrote:http://drop.sc/packs/1114Okay y'all. I first played a game online maybe about 10 days ago. I've probably played about 30 or so games online total... Playing offline I think was a waste of time. Playing online all the time even if I'm just practicing a technique helps to make it less stressful. Guess I've got nothing to lose unlike some of you. As mentioned above, the first 10 or so games I just got my ass handed to me. Badly. Around that time I figured out how to save replays. This is low bronze league stuff. Here's some examples. + Show Spoiler +
By the way, I know that I'm fucking awful still, so keep that in mind if you look at the replays...
In the game vs. SHODAN, I was constantly dicking around with my units and trying to be WhiteRa or something. As you can see that didn't work out very well.
After reading Llama's thread here, I started winning a bunch of games.
Then, something bad happened, vs Blaze. Around the 19 minute mark I finally move out. (After that, don't even bother watching unless you just want to laugh at how bad we suck.) I'm doing my crappy-ass macro, but at least I'm... mostly focusing on it. I get up a ton of stuff and basically A-move. All my stuff gets slaughtered. Why? He's all turtled up with siege tanks and I have a ball of stalkers. I think this is the kind of thing that is making people go say 'you can't just A-move', and made me a little sad. I mean, I was a good boy and focused on my macro and way out-macro-ed him, shouldn't I get a win? :<
That kind of thing has led me to pushing out a little earlier as I did in the last game vs BadJuJu. Then, if I can tell they're turtling up in a certain way, I can at least come up with some simple counter before rolling out.
The main thing I wanted to contribute other than some examples of how this really changed my approach, was that lately I've decided I just don't have the APM/attention to build 1 probe at a time. So, I've decided there's no harm in doing 2 at a time once the game is rolling. I mean, I'm only floating 50 extra minerals. When everything is settled, after doing a warp in, checking my robo/stargate, and queuing up 2 probes at each Nexus, I'm left with a little bit of free time with which to move a unit or two out using the minimap and check out what's up, or expand, or build an upgrade... I think it's really increased my probe output overall with very little drawbacks...
first off, good job on starting to play online It's definitely the best way to improve as you can see.
I'm glad you were able to win games with my advice. Making 2 workers at a time when things get rolling really isn't bad at all. There are tons of players at all levels who do this and it's really not that killer. I'd say keep working though and you'll find that the more comfortable you are with the game and the units/what to build, the more apm you will have. This of course will allow you the more free time for other actions.
And about the walking A-move into a siege line, yes sometimes this sucks. Like I said you aren't going to win 100% of your games and sometimes you will get smashed like that. That being said, a lot of the time even if that army gets crushed you can still just re-macro it up back home and still eventually crush their army. When you get higher up you'll leave your army outside for contain and expand/tech behind it and there are a lot of cute things, but for now I still think just improving that macro is the most important, even more important than winning every game.
keep up the good work!
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I macroed on par with filter, actually had more scvs than him. But on EU that shit don't fly in gold league ^^
Like someone said, multitasking is the best skill to have. When you have it spending money will not be a problem anymore. It will probably take you longer to get it if you get into the habit of not caring about it. To a heterosexual male almost impossible ^^
Yeah you might have short term success focusing on your macro. But if you're in it to win GSL's forget about macro and multitask your ass off. However if you just want to get up one more league and be happy with that. You should probably just macro.
I have focused to much on my macro, am usually appaled at how bad alot better players than me macro. Still I am stuck in gold. Think many master players take alot of micro for granted and don't really count it as micro. Maybe they think multitasking is somehow part of macro. Floating money is bad multitasking if you have the production facilities to be able to spend it. Not having enough money to spend is bad macro.
Macro better is the mantra of bad teachers who don't know how to explain what to do to get better.
To practice multitasking basics: Play easiest AI. Do your build. Make scvs & units nonstop. Take your expo. While you run around the center with your first attacking unit, I do between 2 watchtowers, no shift clicking allowed and he can never stop. Do this until you can do your build without getting high on money and run around unit never stops. Then add something you feel increases the difficulty in a manageable step.
If you're serious about getting better you should probably do some mouse accuracy and keypressing practice also.
Learning the perfect builds can wait, patches will make them irrelevant before your first GSL anyway =)
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On June 17 2012 18:56 jodeci wrote:http://drop.sc/packs/1114Okay y'all. I first played a game online maybe about 10 days ago. I've probably played about 30 or so games online total... Playing offline I think was a waste of time. Playing online all the time even if I'm just practicing a technique helps to make it less stressful. Guess I've got nothing to lose unlike some of you. As mentioned above, the first 10 or so games I just got my ass handed to me. Badly. Around that time I figured out how to save replays. This is low bronze league stuff. Here's some examples. + Show Spoiler +
By the way, I know that I'm fucking awful still, so keep that in mind if you look at the replays...
In the game vs. SHODAN, I was constantly dicking around with my units and trying to be WhiteRa or something. As you can see that didn't work out very well.
After reading Llama's thread here, I started winning a bunch of games.
Then, something bad happened, vs Blaze. Around the 19 minute mark I finally move out. (After that, don't even bother watching unless you just want to laugh at how bad we suck.) I'm doing my crappy-ass macro, but at least I'm... mostly focusing on it. I get up a ton of stuff and basically A-move. All my stuff gets slaughtered. Why? He's all turtled up with siege tanks and I have a ball of stalkers. I think this is the kind of thing that is making people go say 'you can't just A-move', and made me a little sad. I mean, I was a good boy and focused on my macro and way out-macro-ed him, shouldn't I get a win? :<
That kind of thing has led me to pushing out a little earlier as I did in the last game vs BadJuJu. Then, if I can tell they're turtling up in a certain way, I can at least come up with some simple counter before rolling out.
The main thing I wanted to contribute other than some examples of how this really changed my approach, was that lately I've decided I just don't have the APM/attention to build 1 probe at a time. So, I've decided there's no harm in doing 2 at a time once the game is rolling. I mean, I'm only floating 50 extra minerals. When everything is settled, after doing a warp in, checking my robo/stargate, and queuing up 2 probes at each Nexus, I'm left with a little bit of free time with which to move a unit or two out using the minimap and check out what's up, or expand, or build an upgrade... I think it's really increased my probe output overall with very little drawbacks...
Nope!
No micro needed that game.
After you killed his units on the low ground, you still had 2-3 times his army value.
If you had brought your VRs with your main army (and an observer to see cloaked units) you would've stomped him. I mean it would've have been even remotely close.
As it was, you lost because you had no vision of the high ground and eventually got beaten down with tanks and banshees blasting your army unhindered for an extended period of time. This is the one big mistake to fix.
Otherwise, you would've won even a-moving into tanks on the high-ground with really bad macro (32 probes at 10:20 instead of 50-60) with most of your units stuck rubbing against each other in some sort of failure orgy.
None of this is to criticize your play - it's sweet for that few games played. Instead, I'm trying to encourage by showing how much better you can be just by improving macro and fixing the one giant mistake that lost you this game.
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I see alot of these posts on how to help lower league players improve and though they all have good advice I really think you underestimate what lower leagues consist of. Im a plat zerg and i definitly belong there, in a standard game i will lose to a diamond player almost every time. However, almost every high gold and plat level matchup conists of both players doing timing pushes or all ins that they have executed countless times and have become very good at it.
While I agree in a standard game that macro should be the number 1 priority for us, the fact is that most games consist of a very solid timing attack which most people use every game. Me, for example learned a 7:30 roach bane all in that has taken out even master league players when not scouted and defended properly. My mechanics and game knowledge are nowhere near that of a masters but because i practiced one solid build on ladder until i became very good at executing it im able to take wins off much better players. My point is this...in ladder its hard to improve your gameplay by simply "focusing on macro" because most games dont get to that lategame stage where im floating 1k+ minerals and gas at 170 supply because i miss injects or supply blocked myself at some point.
What I'd like to see is a post that helps noobs such as myself learn how to scout and defend these properly, as well as showing us some very safe builds that allow you to get to that late game where you start to get a feel for everything and really improve your macro and mechanics.
Thanks for the post though it did have some very good advice <3
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On June 18 2012 09:17 -Strife- wrote: I see alot of these posts on how to help lower league players improve and though they all have good advice I really think you underestimate what lower leagues consist of. Im a plat zerg and i definitly belong there, in a standard game i will lose to a diamond player almost every time. However, almost every high gold and plat level matchup conists of both players doing timing pushes or all ins that they have executed countless times and have become very good at it.
While I agree in a standard game that macro should be the number 1 priority for us, the fact is that most games consist of a very solid timing attack which most people use every game. Me, for example learned a 7:30 roach bane all in that has taken out even master league players when not scouted and defended properly. My mechanics and game knowledge are nowhere near that of a masters but because i practiced one solid build on ladder until i became very good at executing it im able to take wins off much better players. My point is this...in ladder its hard to improve your gameplay by simply "focusing on macro" because most games dont get to that lategame stage where im floating 1k+ minerals and gas at 170 supply because i miss injects or supply blocked myself at some point.
What I'd like to see is a post that helps noobs such as myself learn how to scout and defend these properly, as well as showing us some very safe builds that allow you to get to that late game where you start to get a feel for everything and really improve your macro and mechanics.
Thanks for the post though it did have some very good advice <3
I appreciate the way you phrased your post and how it respectful while still bringing up a different idea. Too many people simply have this, "I'm Gold League and there is nothing I can improve to get better except by scouting better and having amazing blink micro. You don't even know difficult until you try and hold off a 6gate timing push that hits me" attitude.
That being said, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree somewhat with your post. Plat is one thing because in plat I agree you need to start scouting a little bit to get a general idea of what's going on and little things start to matter, but I still don't think you quite realize where your macro COULD BE at that level. When I was in plat/diamond I thought my macro was amazing and there was just a couple of things to improve but really it was complete ass. If I look back, I would get supply blocked a few times, not build drones immediately when I had larva, not queen transfer, miss a couple injects, and in the end it added up to a LOT of supply and a LOT of missed workers. With zerg it is even harder to realize because you are never "constantly" making drones, rather you are making them in waves and there are more decisions and that can be extremely difficult to teach.
I like your idea about a post that helps learn how to scout and defend, as well as safe builds. Well, I like the part about the safe builds and maybe a basssiiiccc scouting idea. I think it's important to know "hey, I'm zerg on 2 bases and my terran opponent has been on 1 base for 7:40, there's probably a heavy attack coming soon so I should prepare for that because I'm way ahead on workers by now." I don't think it's important to know, "Alright, my protoss opponent took 4 geysers by 6:00 so there is more gas and he most likely won't be going for a fast 4/5/6 gate but rather be going for a 10:30 push that could be either blink stalker (though not as likely with 4 gas), sentry immortal (likely), double stargate (somewhat likely), or possibly taking a fast 3rd with sentries for the ff's."
That's just WAY too much to try and learn at that level and frankly not important enough because if you just clean up everything else you will work your way up no problem and be able to deal with whatever they send at you.
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"Plat is one thing because in plat I agree you need to start scouting a little bit to get a general idea of what's going on and little things start to matter, but I still don't think you quite realize where your macro COULD BE at that level."
Trust me i know my macro is shit. I look at replays of my games i thought i did really well in and cringe at how bad they are. That being said its hard to fuck up the macro on a banebust that caps at 60 supply or a marine tank push at 10 minutes especially with the sheer a mount of games spent doing them. Im not saying im not terrible...any illusion of greatness i have is quickly dispelled when i watch replays of my own games... Its just that alot of these builds dont take much effort to pull off (even us baddies in plat can manage) and are incredibly effective. They also flood the ladder which makes it hard to improve on what i would consider to be accual macro not following a strict build order to a certain time or supply which after the 20th time become muscle memory.
I guess what im trying to say is that it doesnt seem as easy as "just dont focus on the little shit" when im getting straight rolled by well executed builds that are created by players far greater than the ones im going against but still really effective. I understand that im losing because my macro fails but i need more than someone telling me not to waste my apm showing that scrub toss that my 1 roach will kill off his 2 zealots...because then i have 2k minerals and 10 more zealots in my base. Like examples on how to safely play into a macro game without getting wrecked by a sentry immo all in or marine tank timing. I know its not as simple as LOLWTFNOOB just have -- drones by ----time and then constantly produce ----units. Though im sure its nothing that practice, studying replays and reading forums like this wont eventually help ^.^
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On June 18 2012 11:31 -Strife- wrote: "Plat is one thing because in plat I agree you need to start scouting a little bit to get a general idea of what's going on and little things start to matter, but I still don't think you quite realize where your macro COULD BE at that level."
Trust me i know my macro is shit. I look at replays of my games i thought i did really well in and cringe at how bad they are. That being said its hard to fuck up the macro on a banebust that caps at 60 supply or a marine tank push at 10 minutes especially with the sheer a mount of games spent doing them. Im not saying im not terrible...any illusion of greatness i have is quickly dispelled when i watch replays of my own games... Its just that alot of these builds dont take much effort to pull off (even us baddies in plat can manage) and are incredibly effective. They also flood the ladder which makes it hard to improve on what i would consider to be accual macro not following a strict build order to a certain time or supply which after the 20th time become muscle memory.
I guess what im trying to say is that it doesnt seem as easy as "just dont focus on the little shit" when im getting straight rolled by well executed builds that are created by players far greater than the ones im going against but still really effective. I understand that im losing because my macro fails but i need more than someone telling me not to waste my apm showing that scrub toss that my 1 roach will kill off his 2 zealots...because then i have 2k minerals and 10 more zealots in my base. Like examples on how to safely play into a macro game without getting wrecked by a sentry immo all in or marine tank timing. I know its not as simple as LOLWTFNOOB just have -- drones by ----time and then constantly produce ----units. Though im sure its nothing that practice, studying replays and reading forums like this wont eventually help ^.^
Like I said, zerg is really the hardest race to figure this out with because it is very reactionary. You're going to need to drone every chance you can, but still be able to prepare for pushes and such. I think a lot of it doesn't even revolve around scouting though, but rather just general knowledge. ZvT - this match up is one of the toughest to drone because terrans can hit you at anytime. You should just know if they are expanding first though. If they are not, get up to around 30 drones and then start to be a bit more defensive. If they do expand, you can go up to about 40-50 drones and then start to get more defensive (take a macro hatch as well).
ZvZ - Of course this match up is just insane but if you keep some defensive banelings at your base and check for their army composition every now and then, you should be fine. There's obviously more to it, but that's a lot of it right there. At the very least just have overlords around the map for vision because they won't get focused down.
ZvP - if he FFE, drone up until 8:00 and then make roaches and speedlings nonstop from there. You will be safe and have about 55-60 drones. If a push doesn't come and you see him take a 3rd, drone to 75-80 and threaten him with your army. -If he opens with gates, be cautious until you see him expand and then you can drone more and take a 3rd and such.
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Cool stuff, this is really good for people who just don't know where to start on their improvement
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Hi there (first post!)
Im a diamant protoss player who has terrible macro. I mean this thing about never cutting probes is not even well done for me, there are these games where I look the replay and 3-4 probes where missing in my 1 base pvp 13 minutes game... But still I think I deserve that league, and Im even playing masters sometimes. For instance when I get supply blocked, I tech or expand not to pay this mistake too much (sometimes I still pay it, ofc).
Macro is definitely something important to work on, but I improved my play not focusing only on it. That question Im asking to my self "why did I lose this ? How to fix it 'at low cost' ?" after each lose looks like the better way to improve, imho. My macro has improved itself naturally the more I played games. Like my decision making, my micro, etc... My point is just that saying "Macro > all" is not true, at least the "macro" term is not accurate enough. "Spend your minerals and gas" as a golden rule, yes. "Work only your macro, the rest will come after", I dont think so.
Finally, the way you are talking about the scouting is what illustrates the most what Im not agree with. Like you said, scouting is non sense if you dont know what to scout. But losing a game after a forge expand against a roach allin (before warp gate) tought me to scout if there is a third or not : it was useful when I was top gold ! And this way to learn what to scout and when scout it has to be worked on as soon as possible (at least at gold lvl). Maybe you will have some wrong ideas at the beginning but it is not the important point. Actually, the way I see the pvp matchup is very personnal and Im sure pro or at least better players could prove me than Im technically wrong, but still Im improving and adjusting my plays considering my experience looks like the better way to be better at this game.
Sorry for my english, hope you get my point.
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On June 18 2012 14:58 Diplomate wrote: Hi there (first post!)
Im a diamant protoss player who has terrible macro. I mean this thing about never cutting probes is not even well done for me, there are these games where I look the replay and 3-4 probes where missing in my 1 base pvp 13 minutes game... But still I think I deserve that league, and Im even playing masters sometimes. For instance when I get supply blocked, I tech or expand not to pay this mistake too much (sometimes I still pay it, ofc).
Macro is definitely something important to work on, but I improved my play not focusing only on it. That question Im asking to my self "why did I lose this ? How to fix it 'at low cost' ?" after each lose looks like the better way to improve, imho. My macro has improved itself naturally the more I played games. Like my decision making, my micro, etc... My point is just that saying "Macro > all" is not true, at least the "macro" term is not accurate enough. "Spend your minerals and gas" as a golden rule, yes. "Work only your macro, the rest will come after", I dont think so.
Finally, the way you are talking about the scouting is what illustrates the most what Im not agree with. Like you said, scouting is non sense if you dont know what to scout. But losing a game after a forge expand against a roach allin (before warp gate) tought me to scout if there is a third or not : it was useful when I was top gold ! And this way to learn what to scout and when scout it has to be worked on as soon as possible (at least at gold lvl). Maybe you will have some wrong ideas at the beginning but it is not the important point. Actually, the way I see the pvp matchup is very personnal and Im sure pro or at least better players could prove me than Im technically wrong, but still Im improving and adjusting my plays considering my experience looks like the better way to be better at this game.
Sorry for my english, hope you get my point.
First, yes just because you don't have good macro doesn't mean you can't be in diamond. There are always exceptions and some players just have amazing unit control or amazing decision making and that helps get them further. That being said, you will almost always eventually hit a wall (unless you are the guy who 6 pooled his way into GM) and you will have to backup and clean up your macro to advance (or at least advance easier).
I have been masters league for a while now but just recently did I really move into high masters and now I pretty much exclusively play top 8 masters players. This change really came from me cleaning up my macro, nothing else. I used to have pretty good macro and great unit control and that got me into masters, but even I hit a wall where I couldn't advance because of silly supply blocks or not enough worker creation.
There is something I want to point out though, and this is a common misconception "Spend your minerals and gas" as a golden rule, yes. "Work only your macro, the rest will come after", I dont think so.
Many people don't seem to realize that "spend your minerals and gas" is a horrible way to see how you are doing. Try to follow me as I explain.
You do not want to be able to spend your minerals and gas that you have, but rather the minerals and gas that are unrealized or what you have yet to achieve.
Example: Player 1 makes 40 scvs by 10 minutes. He has (madeup numbers) 10K minerals and 2K gas. He spends all 10K and 2K so he is spending it perfectly.
Player 2 makes 50 scvs by 10 minutes. He has (madeup numbers) 13K minerals and 3K gas. He spend 11K minerals and 2.5K gas. He is left with 2K minerals and .5K gas.
An observer in a lower league simply watching this would say, "Well hey look at that big bank that player 2 has, he isn't spending efficiently and thus is not as good/is behind where player 1 is right now."
In actuality, Player 2 is not only ahead in resources spent (and thus more units/buildings), but he has a bank to spend in the future AND more scvs to continue bringing in even more income.
Macro wins here.
Just something to think about.
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Norway68 Posts
Great first post! As a High Master Protoss player on the EU server i have to agree with pretty much everything in this guide. Macro, some scouting and basic unit composition comes before any cute micro. To be honest i didnt even use 2 controll groups for my army before i hit over 1100 Master. A moving a good Collosus ball with a few FF is more than enough most of the time. So only thing i have to disagree with is using 2 controll groups for army as Protoss in Platinum, seems a bit to early.
Great post though!
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I'm a high plat Terran and I just can't get used to hotkeying my units. I can macro/micro well and I don't have any problems with manually boxing and selecting units in engagements. I don't know if this would help my play. Any suggestions for practice that someone can actually use while playing real games?
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On June 19 2012 04:27 sicueft wrote: I'm a high plat Terran and I just can't get used to hotkeying my units. I can macro/micro well and I don't have any problems with manually boxing and selecting units in engagements. I don't know if this would help my play. Any suggestions for practice that someone can actually use while playing real games?
Do you mean physically hotkeying them or using the hotkeys in a battle?
There's really not much wrong with not using a lot of army hotkeys. I don't use many because I enjoy and am used to manually controlling the units with boxes and the sort. That being said, it's useful for when you split your army and such and if you have a lot of spellcasters so I would recommend just practicing hotkeying either multiple armies so you can counter attack and still control your main, or doing something like: hotkey 1: Main army hotkey 2: spellcaster. It's simple, yet will help you differentiate the two.
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MrLlama , nice guide, thanks!
I've a question:
I'm a zerg player, and I think necessary to play with another races, in order to know basic aspects of that races. What's the the level that you recommend where I can "pause" playing with my race and start to play another races? How much time do you find good to that pratice?
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On June 19 2012 17:37 ZeroClick wrote: MrLlama , nice guide, thanks!
I've a question:
I'm a zerg player, and I think necessary to play with another races, in order to know basic aspects of that races. What's the the level that you recommend where I can "pause" playing with my race and start to play another races? How much time do you find good to that pratice?
Don't think it's necessary at all to offrace. Between your own games and watching vods you should pick up everything you need to know. If you want to offrace for your own personal enjoyment, go for it. Just don't expect it to greatly improve your main race.
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Great guide, I have just one small addition to make.
Silver league nowadays is nothing like silver league when the game was released. Saying that its currently possible to win in silver league with just mass queens is silly. Perhaps its possible if youre a smurfing GM but its not a general strategy I would suggest to anyone. Same goes for mass marines only. I beleive even Dragon failed at mass marines @silver league in a smurf session I catched a couple of months ago.
There are good bronze/silver/gold guides for beginners right here in these forums (by FilterSC among others), just point to them instead.
The rest is good stuff though, will use it to try to hit gold (if I can just convince myself to quit playing silly 4v4's).
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On June 19 2012 23:34 Grubbegrabbn wrote: Great guide, I have just one small addition to make.
Silver league nowadays is nothing like silver league when the game was released. Saying that its currently possible to win in silver league with just mass queens is silly. Perhaps its possible if youre a smurfing GM but its not a general strategy I would suggest to anyone. Same goes for mass marines only. I believe even Dragon failed at mass marines @silver league in a smurf session I catched a couple of months ago.
There are good bronze/silver/gold guides for beginners right here in these forums (by FilterSC among others), just point to them instead.
The rest is good stuff though, will use it to try to hit gold (if I can just convince myself to quit playing silly 4v4's).
Yeah, to me the distinction between bronze and silver has gotten bigger in terms of player skill. Blindly a-moving your army is probably the best way to stay in silver, not get out of it.
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On June 09 2012 08:35 PlacidPanda wrote: This would be true if skill in Sc2 was a set thing, however to improve you have to push yourself, that is the basic rule in any sport, whether it is soccer, weightlifting or starcraft. Saying to a young soccer player, dont learn how to dribble well, at your level speed is all that matters, work on that, is simply bad advice. Doing this micro little tricks at first do hurt your overall game. However as you improve you learn how to do these things AND macro, and this is where repetition and practice to come in to improve your skill. I see your point that you don't want the bronze player wasting their apm scouting with their probe while they have 5 probes sitting idle in their main, but thats just common sense, and not really anything revolutionary. That's right.
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Definitely agree,
I was reading some of the strat for silver, and if i don't drop in TVT, they certainly will and then i am almost certainly going to be behind, regardless of how focused i am going to be on my macro.
Definitely need to re-look at some of the guide.
it definitely falls down, because you are assuming that everyone in each is similar, and that they streamlessly improve at the same rate, this just isnt the case, some people would have to got silver league through gold league level macro, but have bronze league army composition and understanding
so trying to get them to macro better, which is there strong point already wont be as effective as say trying to improve their army comp/pos/understanding.
EDIT: dont get me wrong i like and understand the concept of what you are trying to achieve, but it just isnt practical, if i hadnt scouted 95% of my games in silver, then i wouldnt have realised they were SPECIFICALLY going for build, for example a 4rax gasless 1base allin, and so to defend adequately, to stop that i would have to scout, or alternatively taking a quick second, but saying 'you can take a second at the five min mark, build it on the high ground if you need to' is ridiculous, because even high bronze players have specific builds they are going to do, and even if they only half achieve it, an allin build will still be effective against a more macro build. that however defensive they play wont be able to hold off.
secondly, sometimes, giving a little bit of your apm away to this is good, because even if you dont hold off what you do see that time, as you so rightly have said, your muscle/,mind memory will remember for future reference and will be able to better survive in the future.
the short and long of what i am trying to say is, through experience are you going to learn, and by limiting anyone at any level to the guidelines, is not a long term view, to improve. The guidelines you have set out to improve are just a coincidental happenstance to playing/practicing to improve.
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On June 19 2012 17:37 ZeroClick wrote: MrLlama , nice guide, thanks!
I've a question:
I'm a zerg player, and I think necessary to play with another races, in order to know basic aspects of that races. What's the the level that you recommend where I can "pause" playing with my race and start to play another races? How much time do you find good to that pratice?
I think it's important to understand the other races. A lot of times it will help you understand where they are weak because all of the sudden you realize what a pain mutas are in pvz or being caught not sieged up in tvz or whatever. I think you should try to be about a league below your own with other races, but this shouldn't need a crazy amount of practice. I ladder as zerg, but when I do fun practice games with friends a lot (or 2v2, 3v3, 4v4) I'll play random or an offrace so that I can get better at it.
Funny story, this week I turned on SC and hit the ladder button (then minimized to change music). When I came back in, it was at the loading screen and I apparently had randomed my race. I got protoss and was facing a zerg. I knew all of the things zergs hated so I ended up putting a pylon to block his natural, sending the early zealot at like 5:30 with a stalker behind it, macroing up pretty well, and hit at 10:20 with a blink stalker timing attack that he was unable to hold. I wouldn't say I'm always able to win high masters games as a protoss but having a good sense of what my opponent hates definitely helped.
On June 19 2012 23:34 Grubbegrabbn wrote: Great guide, I have just one small addition to make.
Silver league nowadays is nothing like silver league when the game was released. Saying that its currently possible to win in silver league with just mass queens is silly. Perhaps its possible if youre a smurfing GM but its not a general strategy I would suggest to anyone. Same goes for mass marines only. I beleive even Dragon failed at mass marines @silver league in a smurf session I catched a couple of months ago.
There are good bronze/silver/gold guides for beginners right here in these forums (by FilterSC among others), just point to them instead.
The rest is good stuff though, will use it to try to hit gold (if I can just convince myself to quit playing silly 4v4's).
1. I just beat a silver with mass queens a couple days ago to once again prove it was possible. Granted, I'm high masters but that's the point. With great master level macro you can win with pure queens.
And if you look at the FilterSC guides he wins plenty of games with only marines.
That being said, I'll try and once again take a look at the silver/gold level. I'm going to repeat myself from before because I think a lot of it is that people in those leagues make these comments because they don't quite realize what it's really like to have perfect macro and what you can have. Even when they play their best macro game ever, it's generally still well below masters level macro and thus they think they are getting close to topping off and a little more macro won't be much help at all. It's a very hard concept to grasp and I may not have a perfect understanding of lower leagues but I think my experience in playing this game at a higher level can be useful.
I was reading some of the strat for silver, and if i don't drop in TVT, they certainly will and then i am almost certainly going to be behind, regardless of how focused i am going to be on my macro.
Definitely need to re-look at some of the guide.
See this isn't true. If you had awesome macro, then you would be in a great spot when he dropped because you would be way ahead of him and have way more units. I'm a zerg player but send me a message and I'll gladly 1v1 you where I play you straight up and you can do whatever you want. I'm going to simply mass a nice army, and basically a-move it to your base once it gets big enough. You can drop or use cloak banshees or whatever you want and you'll see how far behind you are by simply not macroing at the same level.
On a side note, I think this thread has spurred a new series idea (which wouldn't be able to be started until august when I go back to school but that's okay). I think I'd simply call it, "30 APM or Less" in which case I would play games at various levels (probably bronze-gold) using only 30apm or less. I would intentionally move slowly, not spam, and focus on all the important things that truly win games. With this I could also showcase how to hold all sorts of things. 2 rax bunker rushes, proxy stargate, dts, banshees, etc...(All with 30apm or less of course).
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Great post. Being at a lower level I find this kind of guidance very helpful. I often fall in to the trap of getting out colossus because I can rather than realising I don't need it and scouting too early. All of which I know I do and consistently make these mistakes. I think this post is brilliant in highlighting these mistakes so when I play later today I'm going to test out some of your hints and we'll see.
Thanks!
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On June 21 2012 16:13 gxt313 wrote:Great post. Being at a lower level I find this kind of guidance very helpful. I often fall in to the trap of getting out colossus because I can rather than realising I don't need it and scouting too early. All of which I know I do and consistently make these mistakes. I think this post is brilliant in highlighting these mistakes so when I play later today I'm going to test out some of your hints and we'll see. Thanks!
It's tempting to do because collosus are quite powerful and a lot of times you see them being big game winners higher up, but if you don't have the ground army to support them they lose a lot of their power and I see too many lower league players try to rush them.
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So as a new player who has been focusing on "macro only" for the past 10 days or so (which is about half of my Starcraft 2 playing career), I climbed from high bronze to 1st-in-my-division silver practically overnight, and now my MMR has me matched against mid-to-high golds most of the time, and I'm still not doing too badly. This is 90% due to focusing very hard on macro and repeating builds again and again until they are executed like clockwork (well, OK, a SINGLE build :-P). The other 10% of my improvement has been 1) MINIMAL SCOUTING and 2) LEARNING TO RESPOND/REACT TO PRESSURE APPROPRIATELY.
1) Minimal scouting. As Zerg, I feel like it's essential to get a decent amount of warning time before that opposing army shows up on my ramp between 4:00 and 8:30--if I don't, then I will have dumped every single larva into drones, instead of saving the last round of injects or two to build an army just in the nick of time. Fortunately all I need are 1 or 2 well-placed lings (in ZvP and ZvT) or overlords spread out over the center of the map (ZvZ).
2) Dealing with pressure, drops and other distractions. What I think higher level players take for granted is that they've seen everything: they know what's dangerous, what's not, how much an attack is likely to hurt them, how to defend against early pressure well, etc. And all the while they keep their cool and can continue to macro during this attack. This is not so easy as a beginner until you gain some experience.
Of course there are other reasons I've lost games, like absolutely terrible engagement sense, pretty much insta-losing to cannon rushes, being thrown off my build by pylons or engineering bays destroying my natural hatchery timings, dying to banshees about 50% of the time, etc... but they're not my biggest problems.
Unit composition is still a bit puzzling to me. I die to immortals a fair bit, but a few times my opponent has gone with an army composition that I literally could not even attack (roaches cant vomit at the air) and I STILL won due to just having the stronger macro and their mutas/banshees/void rays simply don't kill my gigantic roach ball in time. Those games are hilarious.
Anyway, I don't think strong macro can win you 99% of games in the lower leagues. I'd say it's more like 90%. :-D
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Are you the butteryllama? GM zerg player from a few seasons ago?
I agree with your approach a lot. Progressing through a league is 95% mechanical. You can do so much in bronze silver and gold just by making units and having a good build order, that you don't really need to worry at all about what your opponent is doing. It is really not until diamond league that you ever need to think to much about proper strategy or unit control or multitasking. Even in diamond league, the biggest difference between master league players and diamond league players is that master league players can macro and do other stuff at the same time. It isn't really so much scouting or strategy, its pretty much just APM. Focus on what wins games man. Totally agree.
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On June 23 2012 01:05 Tritone wrote:So as a new player who has been focusing on "macro only" for the past 10 days or so (which is about half of my Starcraft 2 playing career), I climbed from high bronze to 1st-in-my-division silver practically overnight, and now my MMR has me matched against mid-to-high golds most of the time, and I'm still not doing too badly. This is 90% due to focusing very hard on macro and repeating builds again and again until they are executed like clockwork (well, OK, a SINGLE build :-P). The other 10% of my improvement has been 1) MINIMAL SCOUTING and 2) LEARNING TO RESPOND/REACT TO PRESSURE APPROPRIATELY. 1) Minimal scouting. As Zerg, I feel like it's essential to get a decent amount of warning time before that opposing army shows up on my ramp between 4:00 and 8:30--if I don't, then I will have dumped every single larva into drones, instead of saving the last round of injects or two to build an army just in the nick of time. Fortunately all I need are 1 or 2 well-placed lings (in ZvP and ZvT) or overlords spread out over the center of the map (ZvZ). 2) Dealing with pressure, drops and other distractions. What I think higher level players take for granted is that they've seen everything: they know what's dangerous, what's not, how much an attack is likely to hurt them, how to defend against early pressure well, etc. And all the while they keep their cool and can continue to macro during this attack. This is not so easy as a beginner until you gain some experience. Of course there are other reasons I've lost games, like absolutely terrible engagement sense, pretty much insta-losing to cannon rushes, being thrown off my build by pylons or engineering bays destroying my natural hatchery timings, dying to banshees about 50% of the time, etc... but they're not my biggest problems. Unit composition is still a bit puzzling to me. I die to immortals a fair bit, but a few times my opponent has gone with an army composition that I literally could not even attack (roaches cant vomit at the air) and I STILL won due to just having the stronger macro and their mutas/banshees/void rays simply don't kill my gigantic roach ball in time. Those games are hilarious. Anyway, I don't think strong macro can win you 99% of games in the lower leagues. I'd say it's more like 90%. :-D
Congrats on making it to #1 silver and working towards gold!
I think I'm going to have to edit my original post a tiny bit as I think having some map vision is important more now for zerg players. It's just when people think scouting they think of having perfect overlord spread for drops and sending units/overlords into the base to get their tech on time and blah blah blah which I didn't want. What I think is important is simply what you are saying about having a couple lings around the map to just notify the player when their opponent is pushing out so they can start making more units.
And I'm sorry for lying, it only wins 90% of games
On June 23 2012 01:59 mothergoose729 wrote: Are you the butteryllama? GM zerg player from a few seasons ago?
I agree with your approach a lot. Progressing through a league is 95% mechanical. You can do so much in bronze silver and gold just by making units and having a good build order, that you don't really need to worry at all about what your opponent is doing. It is really not until diamond league that you ever need to think to much about proper strategy or unit control or multitasking. Even in diamond league, the biggest difference between master league players and diamond league players is that master league players can macro and do other stuff at the same time. It isn't really so much scouting or strategy, its pretty much just APM. Focus on what wins games man. Totally agree.
Thanks and I'm glad you agree. No I'm not butteryllama, just MrLlama. I'm starting to finally play a few GM players but it's still mostly high masters.
I just picked up a student yesterday who I'm going to grind with for about a week or two to simply improve macro.
Already after 1 day I've got him 20 more drones by 8 minutes and 60 more supply by 12 minutes, which should be enough to start winning more games. We'll see how he ends up after a couple weeks and I'll continue to report in.
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-Work on timing pushes. In PvZ alone there are so many good 2 base timings you can hit that either go all in for massive damage, or allow you to expand behind them. Intresting, Axslav said the same thing on ChanmanV's pro corner.
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On June 23 2012 03:54 CrazyF1r3f0x wrote:Show nested quote +-Work on timing pushes. In PvZ alone there are so many good 2 base timings you can hit that either go all in for massive damage, or allow you to expand behind them. Intresting, Axslav said the same thing on ChanmanV's pro corner.
Well I'm glad that Axslav and I are on the same level of thought then.
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Good post, helpful to all leagues. As a Silver player, these are things I adjusted on a short while ago to attempt to get better, and this is advice I give to anyone looking to improve. I do disagree on the scouting, but that's as I am a Zerg player, and it helps to defend against stupid cheese, but other than that, great, informative post. <3 Thank you
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I find this a bit condescending to lower league players. There are units that are designed to close huge supply gaps. I've followed macro-only a-move guides like filter's and ive walked huge balls of marines and marauders into siege tanks and thermal lance colossi. I couldn't beat gold players with 200/200 armies of marines and marauders, because contrary to popular belief, you don't have be code S to cast storm or siege up tanks on high ground, and bronze-gold players don't have cognitive deficits preventing them from doing so. I've lost games where i had more bases, more workers, and a bigger army. It's just not that simple. Game sense things like "attack right as stim and +1 complete" and "if his army is the same size as yours but he's ahead of you on upgrades, don't engage yet", and "expo behind an attack" are what really started getting me results.
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On June 21 2012 11:38 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +I was reading some of the strat for silver, and if i don't drop in TVT, they certainly will and then i am almost certainly going to be behind, regardless of how focused i am going to be on my macro.
Definitely need to re-look at some of the guide. See this isn't true. If you had awesome macro, then you would be in a great spot when he dropped because you would be way ahead of him and have way more units. I'm a zerg player but send me a message and I'll gladly 1v1 you where I play you straight up and you can do whatever you want. I'm going to simply mass a nice army, and basically a-move it to your base once it gets big enough. You can drop or use cloak banshees or whatever you want and you'll see how far behind you are by simply not macroing at the same level. On a side note, I think this thread has spurred a new series idea (which wouldn't be able to be started until august when I go back to school but that's okay). I think I'd simply call it, "30 APM or Less" in which case I would play games at various levels (probably bronze-gold) using only 30apm or less. I would intentionally move slowly, not spam, and focus on all the important things that truly win games. With this I could also showcase how to hold all sorts of things. 2 rax bunker rushes, proxy stargate, dts, banshees, etc...(All with 30apm or less of course).
I guess I am a skeptic at heart, because although you are definitely much better than me . After reading what you have said, I cant see, that if i continuously produce SCv's up until the 8 Min mark, and also cloakshee you at around that timing aswell, even if i only kill 5 drones thats X amount of supply, as long as shee doesnt die, i havent wasted any resources, bar the 200/200 cloak, i have a unit that is viable still for harassment of not just supply but resupplying army etc, and im still going to be producing units such as marines/tanks etc, i may have slightly less of those, but then i have an extra banshee.
I guess i would believe what you were saying if you could show me how and where im missing it, cos i try and self evaluate alot, and see if there are any timings that im missing, with scv production.
So if you want to have a 1v1 and show me where that is, that would be awesome.
Also, your 30apm and less idea is pretty frickin clever.
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hmm this guide is good in its core but you seem to assume lower lvl players have lower apm. I think most players are in the lower leagues because of tactics. Take me for an example, i have around 300 apm and 170+ eapm(According to sc2gears) and i am in platinum. My mechanics is of the hook, i never miss a drop on the minimap(i play zerg) and my creepspread is amazing. BUT my tactics ingame is fucking bad. I get cheesed out in like 80 % of my games because i play zerg...
Because of my good mechanics i can do all those things pro's do on their stream because i got even better mechanics than some pro players. I can do everything you said i shouldn't do and still be platinum...
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On June 23 2012 20:09 cork wrote: hmm this guide is good in its core but you seem to assume lower lvl players have lower apm. I think most players are in the lower leagues because of tactics. Take me for an example, i have around 300 apm and 170+ eapm(According to sc2gears) and i am in platinum. My mechanics is of the hook, i never miss a drop on the minimap(i play zerg) and my creepspread is amazing. BUT my tactics ingame is fucking bad. I get cheesed out in like 80 % of my games because i play zerg...
Because of my good mechanics i can do all those things pro's do on their stream because i got even better mechanics than some pro players. I can do everything you said i shouldn't do and still be platinum...
Well as I've kind of said before, plat and diamond is where you start to get to that middle ground. It's where PURELY macro will not win you a game, but the funny thing is a lot of times once you get down some of the necessary tactics/mechanics, it's actually macro that will move you out of the league and up a notch.
Another thing to note is you have the same symptom that most people have and I've explained this before. You have the "I can't get much better in a certain area symptom" which I think is pretty obvious to see considering you believe your mechanics are better than some pros. This is very common around your level and I'm going to assume you're someone who has said you are a high plat/low diamond league player before because you think that's where you deserve to be.
PM me with a replay and I'll follow through and give you a quick 3 goals to jump you to the next league. My guess is I'll find places for better macro, better engagements needed, and maybe some basic things like simply getting down an evo chamber to be safe earlier.
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Firstly PMed.
secondly could you elaborate more on this 30 apm idea, i think its exactly what lower level players need, if would have to have everything going at that speed, so even engagements etc
but if you can show just how to defend at that APM level then it would be really cool
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On June 09 2012 07:05 MrLlama wrote: To cut to the chase, people misuse their APM. The biggest REASON for this misuse is because people watch pro replays and streams, see the little details that win games for the pros, and then try to apply those same things to their gameplay.
I think there hasn't been a single time that i've had higher APM than my enemy (except when being matched vs lower leagues at the start of the season). Whether i win or lose i always have lower APM, sometimes, my enemy has twice my APM (and EPM) and i'm stil able to outmultitask them in 30 min macro games. At the end of a replay i check the APM and it's always lower. - EU Masters.
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On June 24 2012 01:00 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2012 20:09 cork wrote: hmm this guide is good in its core but you seem to assume lower lvl players have lower apm. I think most players are in the lower leagues because of tactics. Take me for an example, i have around 300 apm and 170+ eapm(According to sc2gears) and i am in platinum. My mechanics is of the hook, i never miss a drop on the minimap(i play zerg) and my creepspread is amazing. BUT my tactics ingame is fucking bad. I get cheesed out in like 80 % of my games because i play zerg...
Because of my good mechanics i can do all those things pro's do on their stream because i got even better mechanics than some pro players. I can do everything you said i shouldn't do and still be platinum... Another thing to note is you have the same symptom that most people have and I've explained this before. You have the "I can't get much better in a certain area symptom" which I think is pretty obvious to see considering you believe your mechanics are better than some pros. This is very common around your level and I'm going to assume you're someone who has said you are a high plat/low diamond league player before because you think that's where you deserve to be. .
Thats just plain wrong... Ive played around 1000 games against plat people and NONE of them had an eapm over 135, i have an eapm around 160 - 175. I looked at the pros eapm and the best have around 170 to 250 while the lower pros have around my eapm. Its not COMMON that players around plat think they have good mechanics.
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On June 24 2012 01:35 Emporium wrote: Firstly PMed.
secondly could you elaborate more on this 30 apm idea, i think its exactly what lower level players need, if would have to have everything going at that speed, so even engagements etc
but if you can show just how to defend at that APM level then it would be really cool
Yeah basically I think there are 2 big things that lower level players deal with 1. Poor macro because they are trying to do too many things (which is what this whole thread is about) 2. Unsure of what to do when they get cheesed/dropped/pressured. The pros use 250apm and fly around the screen to deal with everything and it's hard to determine what the most important actions were. I'm going to use 30apm to slowly defend and go over every important step by step detail to go through to defend something.
On June 24 2012 01:36 -Kira wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2012 07:05 MrLlama wrote: To cut to the chase, people misuse their APM. The biggest REASON for this misuse is because people watch pro replays and streams, see the little details that win games for the pros, and then try to apply those same things to their gameplay. I think there hasn't been a single time that i've had higher APM than my enemy (except when being matched vs lower leagues at the start of the season). Whether i win or lose i always have lower APM, sometimes, my enemy has twice my APM (and EPM) and i'm stil able to outmultitask them in 30 min macro games. At the end of a replay i check the APM and it's always lower. - EU Masters.
Yeah I believe that. First off, what race do you play? That can make a difference as protoss needs less apm than terran or zerg usually. Also, using APM effectively is really what matters. A lot of people spam more apm for less important actions and they can still easily lose the game.
in SC2 you only really need like 70apm to do everything you truly want to do. Anything above that is nice but not necessary to at least get into masters.
On June 24 2012 01:55 cork wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On June 24 2012 01:00 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2012 20:09 cork wrote: hmm this guide is good in its core but you seem to assume lower lvl players have lower apm. I think most players are in the lower leagues because of tactics. Take me for an example, i have around 300 apm and 170+ eapm(According to sc2gears) and i am in platinum. My mechanics is of the hook, i never miss a drop on the minimap(i play zerg) and my creepspread is amazing. BUT my tactics ingame is fucking bad. I get cheesed out in like 80 % of my games because i play zerg...
Because of my good mechanics i can do all those things pro's do on their stream because i got even better mechanics than some pro players. I can do everything you said i shouldn't do and still be platinum... Another thing to note is you have the same symptom that most people have and I've explained this before. You have the "I can't get much better in a certain area symptom" which I think is pretty obvious to see considering you believe your mechanics are better than some pros. This is very common around your level and I'm going to assume you're someone who has said you are a high plat/low diamond league player before because you think that's where you deserve to be. . Thats just plain wrong... Ive played around 1000 games against plat people and NONE of them had an eapm over 135, i have an eapm around 160 - 175. I looked at the pros eapm and the best have around 170 to 250 while the lower pros have around my eapm. Its not COMMON that players around plat think they have good mechanics.
I think you are confusing apm (or eapm) with mechanics. I can spam a lot of actions and lose tons of games, or I can use 40eapm and win lots of game at a level higher than yours. That's just your ability to click a lot, how you USE that apm is what matters. It's definitely better to have more than less though when learning how to use it importantly.
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On June 24 2012 01:55 cork wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2012 01:00 MrLlama wrote:On June 23 2012 20:09 cork wrote: hmm this guide is good in its core but you seem to assume lower lvl players have lower apm. I think most players are in the lower leagues because of tactics. Take me for an example, i have around 300 apm and 170+ eapm(According to sc2gears) and i am in platinum. My mechanics is of the hook, i never miss a drop on the minimap(i play zerg) and my creepspread is amazing. BUT my tactics ingame is fucking bad. I get cheesed out in like 80 % of my games because i play zerg...
Because of my good mechanics i can do all those things pro's do on their stream because i got even better mechanics than some pro players. I can do everything you said i shouldn't do and still be platinum... Another thing to note is you have the same symptom that most people have and I've explained this before. You have the "I can't get much better in a certain area symptom" which I think is pretty obvious to see considering you believe your mechanics are better than some pros. This is very common around your level and I'm going to assume you're someone who has said you are a high plat/low diamond league player before because you think that's where you deserve to be. . Thats just plain wrong... Ive played around 1000 games against plat people and NONE of them had an eapm over 135, i have an eapm around 160 - 175. I looked at the pros eapm and the best have around 170 to 250 while the lower pros have around my eapm. Its not COMMON that players around plat think they have good mechanics.
Unless you post replays of your 'amazing mechanics' that are superior to pro players, you can't really expect us to take what you're saying seriously.
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On June 24 2012 02:03 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2012 01:35 Emporium wrote: Firstly PMed.
secondly could you elaborate more on this 30 apm idea, i think its exactly what lower level players need, if would have to have everything going at that speed, so even engagements etc
but if you can show just how to defend at that APM level then it would be really cool Yeah basically I think there are 2 big things that lower level players deal with 1. Poor macro because they are trying to do too many things (which is what this whole thread is about) 2. Unsure of what to do when they get cheesed/dropped/pressured. The pros use 250apm and fly around the screen to deal with everything and it's hard to determine what the most important actions were. I'm going to use 30apm to slowly defend and go over every important step by step detail to go through to defend something. Show nested quote +On June 24 2012 01:36 -Kira wrote:On June 09 2012 07:05 MrLlama wrote: To cut to the chase, people misuse their APM. The biggest REASON for this misuse is because people watch pro replays and streams, see the little details that win games for the pros, and then try to apply those same things to their gameplay. I think there hasn't been a single time that i've had higher APM than my enemy (except when being matched vs lower leagues at the start of the season). Whether i win or lose i always have lower APM, sometimes, my enemy has twice my APM (and EPM) and i'm stil able to outmultitask them in 30 min macro games. At the end of a replay i check the APM and it's always lower. - EU Masters. Yeah I believe that. First off, what race do you play? That can make a difference as protoss needs less apm than terran or zerg usually. Also, using APM effectively is really what matters. A lot of people spam more apm for less important actions and they can still easily lose the game. in SC2 you only really need like 70apm to do everything you truly want to do. Anything above that is nice but not necessary to at least get into masters. Show nested quote +On June 24 2012 01:55 cork wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On June 24 2012 01:00 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2012 20:09 cork wrote: hmm this guide is good in its core but you seem to assume lower lvl players have lower apm. I think most players are in the lower leagues because of tactics. Take me for an example, i have around 300 apm and 170+ eapm(According to sc2gears) and i am in platinum. My mechanics is of the hook, i never miss a drop on the minimap(i play zerg) and my creepspread is amazing. BUT my tactics ingame is fucking bad. I get cheesed out in like 80 % of my games because i play zerg...
Because of my good mechanics i can do all those things pro's do on their stream because i got even better mechanics than some pro players. I can do everything you said i shouldn't do and still be platinum... Another thing to note is you have the same symptom that most people have and I've explained this before. You have the "I can't get much better in a certain area symptom" which I think is pretty obvious to see considering you believe your mechanics are better than some pros. This is very common around your level and I'm going to assume you're someone who has said you are a high plat/low diamond league player before because you think that's where you deserve to be. . Thats just plain wrong... Ive played around 1000 games against plat people and NONE of them had an eapm over 135, i have an eapm around 160 - 175. I looked at the pros eapm and the best have around 170 to 250 while the lower pros have around my eapm. Its not COMMON that players around plat think they have good mechanics. I think you are confusing apm (or eapm) with mechanics. I can spam a lot of actions and lose tons of games, or I can use 40eapm and win lots of game at a level higher than yours. That's just your ability to click a lot, how you USE that apm is what matters. It's definitely better to have more than less though when learning how to use it importantly.
but eapm takes away spam and show just the EFFECTIVE actions...
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On June 24 2012 02:15 cork wrote: but eapm takes away spam and show just the EFFECTIVE actions...
Effective doesn't mean it's effective in terms of advancing your game play. It just means it's not a spammed action. I could boost my EAPM by cancelling units I create individually, that doesn't mean it's actually effective.
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Ok what I have done so far is take what you have said and kind of tweaked it a bit and it seems to work so far.
Most of my games consist of making roaches and lings in ZvT and ZvZ.
In ZvP I am using roaches and lings with a rough stephano style max. Rough meaning can't perform it to profection but have general concept down.
Zerg is different as you said so what I have been doing is basically focusing on the openers i.e. hatch first or pool first 15/15,14/14. I still scout can't break that habit as I was diamond toss so I do still scout even though Im silver zerg after my break from the game.
Basically I am preparing for what the basic unit comps I will face at stages be it immortals or bio and tanks. So I am not focusing on a build really just a rough draft I guess just having what I think I need at what times. Its been working pretty good so far. Lings and roaches pretty much covers everything I play at my level. ZvZ is another story right now though as those games actually seem to go longer I just go 14/14 and go from there. Never realized how much defenders advantage comes into play in zvz.
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On June 24 2012 02:11 Exoteric wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2012 01:55 cork wrote:On June 24 2012 01:00 MrLlama wrote:On June 23 2012 20:09 cork wrote: hmm this guide is good in its core but you seem to assume lower lvl players have lower apm. I think most players are in the lower leagues because of tactics. Take me for an example, i have around 300 apm and 170+ eapm(According to sc2gears) and i am in platinum. My mechanics is of the hook, i never miss a drop on the minimap(i play zerg) and my creepspread is amazing. BUT my tactics ingame is fucking bad. I get cheesed out in like 80 % of my games because i play zerg...
Because of my good mechanics i can do all those things pro's do on their stream because i got even better mechanics than some pro players. I can do everything you said i shouldn't do and still be platinum... Another thing to note is you have the same symptom that most people have and I've explained this before. You have the "I can't get much better in a certain area symptom" which I think is pretty obvious to see considering you believe your mechanics are better than some pros. This is very common around your level and I'm going to assume you're someone who has said you are a high plat/low diamond league player before because you think that's where you deserve to be. . Thats just plain wrong... Ive played around 1000 games against plat people and NONE of them had an eapm over 135, i have an eapm around 160 - 175. I looked at the pros eapm and the best have around 170 to 250 while the lower pros have around my eapm. Its not COMMON that players around plat think they have good mechanics. Unless you post replays of your 'amazing mechanics' that are superior to pro players, you can't really expect us to take what you're saying seriously.
here are some replays from today
http://drop.sc/202808
http://drop.sc/202809
http://drop.sc/202810
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On June 24 2012 02:19 oZii wrote: Ok what I have done so far is take what you have said and kind of tweaked it a bit and it seems to work so far.
Most of my games consist of making roaches and lings in ZvT and ZvZ.
In ZvP I am using roaches and lings with a rough stephano style max. Rough meaning can't perform it to profection but have general concept down.
Zerg is different as you said so what I have been doing is basically focusing on the openers i.e. hatch first or pool first 15/15,14/14. I still scout can't break that habit as I was diamond toss so I do still scout even though Im silver zerg after my break from the game.
Basically I am preparing for what the basic unit comps I will face at stages be it immortals or bio and tanks. So I am not focusing on a build really just a rough draft I guess just having what I think I need at what times. Its been working pretty good so far. Lings and roaches pretty much covers everything I play at my level. ZvZ is another story right now though as those games actually seem to go longer I just go 14/14 and go from there. Never realized how much defenders advantage comes into play in zvz.
glad to know it's working. Yeah roach ling can beat almost anything. Even if they go air just get queens and spores at home and a mass ling army can crush them lol.
And zvz is just a strange match up. Defender has a huge advantage though because of the fact that the attacker NEEDS to do something, whether it be force units or kill drones or whatever because if he doesn't he is behind.
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On June 24 2012 02:16 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2012 02:15 cork wrote: but eapm takes away spam and show just the EFFECTIVE actions...
Effective doesn't mean it's effective in terms of advancing your game play. It just means it's not a spammed action. I could boost my EAPM by cancelling units I create individually, that doesn't mean it's actually effective.
here are some replays from today. Can you take a look at them and give me your expertise. Thanks in advance.
http://drop.sc/202808
http://drop.sc/202809
http://drop.sc/202810
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I totally disagree with this entire thread lol. Idk if its just because of the diffirence in skill on servers, but from gold league of its no longer just macro man. To win you have to scout good, micro well and all those things. The times where all you needed to get into diamond or master was macro is over. The thing that got me the most as a terran though: "I think this is a great time to start thinking about drops as a terran player." --In platinum.... Srsly? I started dropping in TvZ since bronze, and it is basicly a way to win a game.Well, theres more but I just want to say you think a bit too low of the lower leagues.
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Definitely see what you mean now, thank you for the help, really appreciate it.
SKepticism is good!
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On June 24 2012 03:05 Noruxas wrote: I totally disagree with this entire thread lol. Idk if its just because of the diffirence in skill on servers, but from gold league of its no longer just macro man. To win you have to scout good, micro well and all those things. The times where all you needed to get into diamond or master was macro is over. The thing that got me the most as a terran though: "I think this is a great time to start thinking about drops as a terran player." --In platinum.... Srsly? I started dropping in TvZ since bronze, and it is basicly a way to win a game.Well, theres more but I just want to say you think a bit too low of the lower leagues.
LOL, this is funny cos like 10 posts earlier i say the same thing.
I think that MRLlama is trying to say is not that you shouldnt drop, just that if you macro more, the you shoudlnt be dropping at these levels because if you macro perfectly your so far ahead then it is more efficient to not drop cos you can just a-move your army and win.
i just played him, and the macro level difference meant that by 16min mark he had a 40 supply lead.
So to re-iterate, i think he means, that there is no point in doing drops at this level because if you macro properly, then you will be so far ahead, that the dropping doesnt gain you as much as just macroing hard does.
because you can then just a-move and win.(by having a supply lead, and better economy so that even if you lose, you can respawn quicker etc.)
And i think your forgetting that Dropping is to try and gain an edge when you and your opponent are of similar level, well bronze to gold, generally it is just practicing build orders and executing them perfectly, and you win. I suspect that the reason you won the matches you did at the lower levels was less to do with the fact that you dropped but more to do with the fact that you just macroed better than your opponent.
Bear in mind i said less likely, not, not at all.
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On June 24 2012 03:43 Emporium wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2012 03:05 Noruxas wrote: I totally disagree with this entire thread lol. Idk if its just because of the diffirence in skill on servers, but from gold league of its no longer just macro man. To win you have to scout good, micro well and all those things. The times where all you needed to get into diamond or master was macro is over. The thing that got me the most as a terran though: "I think this is a great time to start thinking about drops as a terran player." --In platinum.... Srsly? I started dropping in TvZ since bronze, and it is basicly a way to win a game.Well, theres more but I just want to say you think a bit too low of the lower leagues. LOL, this is funny cos like 10 posts earlier i say the same thing. I think that MRLlama is trying to say is not that you shouldnt drop, just that if you macro more, the you shoudlnt be dropping at these levels because if you macro perfectly your so far ahead then it is more efficient to not drop cos you can just a-move your army and win. i just played him, and the macro level difference meant that by 16min mark he had a 40 supply lead. So to re-iterate, i think he means, that there is no point in doing drops at this level because if you macro properly, then you will be so far ahead, that the dropping doesnt gain you as much as just macroing hard does. because you can then just a-move and win.(by having a supply lead, and better economy so that even if you lose, you can respawn quicker etc.) And i think your forgetting that Dropping is to try and gain an edge when you and your opponent are of similar level, well bronze to gold, generally it is just practicing build orders and executing them perfectly, and you win. I suspect that the reason you won the matches you did at the lower levels was less to do with the fact that you dropped but more to do with the fact that you just macroed better than your opponent. Bear in mind i said less likely, not, not at all.
Something along those lines.
You probably can win a few games by doing a drop and your opponent being terrible at defending drops.
you can also win a game by 6 pooling.
What does that really do for you in the long run?
He dropped me and killed 4-5 drones but I was already ahead on drones, 2 bases ahead, and ahead in my upgrades/tech. If he spent the energy of playing to just focus on improving on his macro, he would have been better off than just doing a little damage with a drop.
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I went from bronze to diamond and I feel that when I was in silver I followed your advice for gold,when I was in gold I followed you plat advice and so on. What Im trying to say is that I feel that the game has "evolved" and every league has gotten harder.
Still awesome advice^^ .
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very good work, Ive been watching filtersc bronze to masters zerg and am noticing a lot of correlation between this post and his videos!
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nice OP. it is nice to have an idea of what I should be focusing on at different levels of play. also, I think there are some things I do well ahead of my rank (muta micro), but also a lot of things I don't do well that you say lower leverl players should focus on. I think this gives me an idea of what I need to work on improving. anyways, thx for the post.
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I like to scout a little bit even in silver, just to rule out some of the more obnoxious game ending cheeses like proxy raxes or gates.
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For lower level players, I think it's worth finding a number of production structures that works for your APM / multitasking and lets you zero out your resources regularly. If you instead choke your production with the leanest build possible, ie something pros use, you may end up floating a ton of resources that could have been used to win the game. As you play, push yourself to keep hitting those macro cycles. If you're using excess infrastructure, eventually you should hit a point where your economy can't keep up. That's basically where you can improve, either through more consistent worker production, or trimming the fat so you have more army.
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On June 27 2012 05:27 nanoscorp wrote: For lower level players, I think it's worth finding a number of production structures that works for your APM / multitasking and lets you zero out your resources regularly. If you instead choke your production with the leanest build possible, ie something pros use, you may end up floating a ton of resources that could have been used to win the game. As you play, push yourself to keep hitting those macro cycles. If you're using excess infrastructure, eventually you should hit a point where your economy can't keep up. That's basically where you can improve, either through more consistent worker production, or trimming the fat so you have more army.
This. Very well put and it really helps explain why I think people need to stop copying pros.
They spend everything perfectly. You won't and right now you should build more production facilities and make a ton of units as opposed to trying to be perfect and floating a ton.
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Great post.
Leaving it open to review before each time I load SC2 to make sure I ahve soemthing productive to focus on.
On June 27 2012 05:27 nanoscorp wrote: For lower level players, I think it's worth finding a number of production structures that works for your APM / multitasking and lets you zero out your resources regularly. If you instead choke your production with the leanest build possible, ie something pros use, you may end up floating a ton of resources that could have been used to win the game. As you play, push yourself to keep hitting those macro cycles. If you're using excess infrastructure, eventually you should hit a point where your economy can't keep up. That's basically where you can improve, either through more consistent worker production, or trimming the fat so you have more army.
This was my advice for a bronze friend starting zerg. Floating minerals? build another macro hatch. Missing injects, use the extra energy on the macro hatch. Simple way to ensure he got a lot of units without having perfect injects.
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On June 28 2012 10:24 Kharnage wrote:Great post. Leaving it open to review before each time I load SC2 to make sure I ahve soemthing productive to focus on. Show nested quote +On June 27 2012 05:27 nanoscorp wrote: For lower level players, I think it's worth finding a number of production structures that works for your APM / multitasking and lets you zero out your resources regularly. If you instead choke your production with the leanest build possible, ie something pros use, you may end up floating a ton of resources that could have been used to win the game. As you play, push yourself to keep hitting those macro cycles. If you're using excess infrastructure, eventually you should hit a point where your economy can't keep up. That's basically where you can improve, either through more consistent worker production, or trimming the fat so you have more army. This was my advice for a bronze friend starting zerg. Floating minerals? build another macro hatch. Missing injects, use the extra energy on the macro hatch. Simple way to ensure he got a lot of units without having perfect injects.
and at that level it's so important to just have a lot of stuff. 8 barracks on one base? Sure! If you're going to try and only have 3 and float 3K minerals instead, you might as well have 8 and you will win more games.
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On June 19 2012 23:34 Grubbegrabbn wrote: Great guide, I have just one small addition to make.
Silver league nowadays is nothing like silver league when the game was released. Saying that its currently possible to win in silver league with just mass queens is silly. Perhaps its possible if youre a smurfing GM but its not a general strategy I would suggest to anyone. Same goes for mass marines only. I beleive even Dragon failed at mass marines @silver league in a smurf session I catched a couple of months ago.
There are good bronze/silver/gold guides for beginners right here in these forums (by FilterSC among others), just point to them instead.
The rest is good stuff though, will use it to try to hit gold (if I can just convince myself to quit playing silly 4v4's).
I won with mass hellion, mass sentry, mass queen, mass viking in silver last season.. your point? I am not even masters league skill.
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I think this is a great guide for players just getting into 1v1 SC2. At the lower levels, bronze to plat, there is far to much focus on builds and counters. Improving macro and scouting is a far better and more stable way for players to advance through the leagues. I found my skill level rocketed when I stopped trying to micro my stalkers in the early game and just focused on making probes, the mini map and not losing scouting units. Starcraft 2 is a big game and players should not try to improve at everything at once. Control/micro is great, but that will come over time and macro is something that can be refined every game, no matter what is going on.
Also, to my arch enemies, terrans: Do not fear the scan. Love to scan. Better to scan to much, than to scan to little.
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i agree that good macro is the key to winning games in low leagues, especially since i myself am but a lowly silver terran player. however i disagree that you should only start taking gas once you are in gold. I mean sure the gasless-mass-marine tactic got me out of bronze, but it doesnt work in silver at all. i am constantly going 1raxFE into 3 rax, 1 factory 1 starport... otherwise i wouldnt even stand a chance at winning.
although its only my opinion, but i would say that terrans needs to start to learn teching and using gas at silver
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your Country52796 Posts
according to this I am diamond. (plat protoss) Still, pretty helpful to the people that are able to use their hands. Good job.
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On June 29 2012 08:45 TehTemplar wrote: according to this I am diamond. (plat protoss) Still, pretty helpful to the people that are able to use their hands. Good job.
If you are doing everything below the diamond level consistently, then you should be moving up to diamond in the near future.
Definitely don't overestimate your skills though. I see so many players claim amazing macro and then you watch them supply block 3-4 times in the first 5 minutes and right there is all the improvement they need to be working on.
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If you focus on micro, you can keep your banshee alive longer; not only doing more damage but taking more of your opponent's attention. This will cut into their macro as well as your own. If you just sit around passively macroing, the opponent will have no problem doing the same.
I don't think it's particularly useful to focus on macro or micro exclusively. The real difficulty lies in doing both semi simultaneously. That's what wins you games, and even if you suck at it, just keep trying to do both at the same time.
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On June 29 2012 23:54 Chvol wrote: If you focus on micro, you can keep your banshee alive longer; not only doing more damage but taking more of your opponent's attention. This will cut into their macro as well as your own. If you just sit around passively macroing, the opponent will have no problem doing the same.
I don't think it's particularly useful to focus on macro or micro exclusively. The real difficulty lies in doing both semi simultaneously. That's what wins you games, and even if you suck at it, just keep trying to do both at the same time.
You don't get better by both sucking in macro and hoping you sucked a little less.
Not only that, but I watch people sit there and micro their banshee for 2 minutes straight with terrible macro. In the end their opponent loses like 10 workers but he is still building workers and units over that time and even with a 10 worker loss he is now ahead because you spent all your time microing your banshee.
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Hello, I'm a silver league Protoss player and I've been wondering, when would be a good time to attack? Also, what should I do in the case where the other player has siege tanks? Every time I attack when they have siege tanks, my army gets obliterated.
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Hey man just have to say im a gold protoss who has been having so much trouble lately, after a defeat at the tsl qualifiers by haypro, where i lost because of soley macro i got really discourged, i mean ofc i didn't expect to win, but i hated losing just because a core skill wasnt good. Then i went back to ladder and just kept on getting destroyed i took a look at your thread, and it has helped so much, ive found that even when players do somthing weird i can just out macro them and end up wining, b4 i had focused so much on some really micro intensive play, alot of sentries, warp prisim, ht, etc. Trying to do things that i could do but my macro would slip and i would lose because my army just wasnt big enough or my econ was just not good. But ever since i started just looking at my base, im just out macroing and wining, its nice to win again as recently i went on an 8 game losing streak that really discouraged me and made me want to quit sc2. So thanks man <3, and i hope it can help others as well.
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I think easily the most useful thing that anyone in plat and below can do is macro properly. Have enough production/hit injects and make sure you have enough workers and production. And by far and above the most important thing, in a big fight, YOU MUST MACRO while the fight goes on. If you check the replay, you may of made marines/tanks/medivacs constantly all game and kept cash low, then after the big fight, oh shit, you're on 1600 minerals and have nothing to follow up
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On July 01 2012 03:28 NiNjAPlation wrote: Hey man just have to say im a gold protoss who has been having so much trouble lately, after a defeat at the tsl qualifiers by haypro, where i lost because of soley macro i got really discourged, i mean ofc i didn't expect to win, but i hated losing just because a core skill wasnt good. Then i went back to ladder and just kept on getting destroyed i took a look at your thread, and it has helped so much, ive found that even when players do somthing weird i can just out macro them and end up wining, b4 i had focused so much on some really micro intensive play, alot of sentries, warp prisim, ht, etc. Trying to do things that i could do but my macro would slip and i would lose because my army just wasnt big enough or my econ was just not good. But ever since i started just looking at my base, im just out macroing and wining, its nice to win again as recently i went on an 8 game losing streak that really discouraged me and made me want to quit sc2. So thanks man <3, and i hope it can help others as well.
Glad I could help Keep it up and don't get discouraged by downswings. I went 1-9, then 34-10, then 2-10, etc... so it really jumps all over the place. Just overall try to keep a positive attitude and keep focusing on important things like macro and you'll do well
On June 30 2012 06:34 PencilFlavor wrote: Hello, I'm a silver league Protoss player and I've been wondering, when would be a good time to attack? Also, what should I do in the case where the other player has siege tanks? Every time I attack when they have siege tanks, my army gets obliterated.
A good time to attack in what match up? Also it really depends on what unit comp you have and etc. In PvZ I'd say try to attack around 10:30 off of 2 bases. This should be when you start to really build up a nice unit composition. PvP is very tough to say because it depends what he is doing so I can't really give you a time for that. PvT you'll want to hit once you get a sizeable army. Protoss generally wants to just get that awesome massive army so don't feel any urgency to really attack too much at that level. Instead, keep the defenders position and build up a nice army.
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On June 09 2012 09:38 shaun3h wrote:i dont know if maybe the gold/plat zerg advice is wierd because usa is diff to eu server but i find the advice strange.. (only gold top8 EU atm) adversity to mutas: yes they are micro intensive but for the apm i put in a protoss needs to use some to defend them. The pressure of them helps discourage the protoss moving out helping you further your tech/upgrades. if they cant deal with it well.. or weren't going stalkers you can do really nice damage easily (punish immo sentry heavy pushes) adversity to infestors: obviously they cant attack making them a bit risky to rely on but consider this.. run 1/2 lings at an expo.. see no cannon.. run 1-4 burrowed infestors in and hold shift, press T and spam click then still holding shift right click back to mid/yourbase.. you have easy damage forcing a reaction from them. Once practised you can set this up in like 2 seconds and do it just after a round of injects or something so im barely losing anything and if the protoss is out of position or doesnt react well they could lose the expo let alone a lot of workers for just energy. Only ling roach: unless you're planning on allin every game i dont understand this. infestors are superb at aoe damage useful in every matchup (perhaps most zvzs this level dont reach that). If a protoss sees only roachling and builds right or a terran doesnt get caught unsieged it just seems unlikely you can trade with these past 10minutes. (also without muta/inf how you deal with drops?) scouting P seems light: does he have colly... i would replace with 9scout on the 1v1maps. pylon highground = gateopening expect pressure. See pylon lowground = FFE can go more eco (3base no gas anyone?:D ) , watch for natural gas, expect 2base push usually. some other more general thoughts: -idea of shift clicking to allow you to do more things easier (obviously dangerous in some situations but in most it can help LOADS.. shiftclicking drones, sorting drops, focusing prio targets, pathing a scout early when you have less to do anyway, etc - A-moving is all well and good but sometimes micro'ing/focus firing is necessary.. banes through a group of marines instead of amove.. mutas picking tanks... picking off either sentries/immortals in zvp.. lingbane v lingbane in zvz control can't wait til diamond imo. I understand i dont have the apm to do everything but there comes a time when making stuff 5seconds later is worth it if you lose 30 less supply in a fight because of the micro TL;DR = i think you underestimate what people are capable of. I understand the "don't run before you can walk" but i think even gold nubs like me could surprise you playing against plats and diamonds with macro builds and the more relaxed ladder now. Sometimes i think you gotta push the babybird outa the nest to see it can fly This is from a *much* lower skilled player's perspective so im open to the idea i'll get slated and people may disagree but i feel if i played along the guidelines provided i would be a lot worse and some of my greatest games wouldn't have been possible if i wasn't trying to stretch myself.
I'm sorry. But are you actually telling a masters that you think he underestimates you?
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On July 01 2012 05:15 MrLlama wrote: A good time to attack in what match up? Also it really depends on what unit comp you have and etc. In PvZ I'd say try to attack around 10:30 off of 2 bases. This should be when you start to really build up a nice unit composition. PvP is very tough to say because it depends what he is doing so I can't really give you a time for that. PvT you'll want to hit once you get a sizeable army. Protoss generally wants to just get that awesome massive army so don't feel any urgency to really attack too much at that level. Instead, keep the defenders position and build up a nice army.
Sorry, I should have been more specific. I'm sticking with a pure gateway army since that's what you suggested in your bronze/silver section. So would it be preferable if I just maxed out then A moved into the other person's base? Also, sorry for asking this again, but what do I do against siege tanks? I usually try to contain, but they often drop inside of my base and beat me.
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On July 01 2012 09:37 PencilFlavor wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2012 05:15 MrLlama wrote: A good time to attack in what match up? Also it really depends on what unit comp you have and etc. In PvZ I'd say try to attack around 10:30 off of 2 bases. This should be when you start to really build up a nice unit composition. PvP is very tough to say because it depends what he is doing so I can't really give you a time for that. PvT you'll want to hit once you get a sizeable army. Protoss generally wants to just get that awesome massive army so don't feel any urgency to really attack too much at that level. Instead, keep the defenders position and build up a nice army.
Sorry, I should have been more specific. I'm sticking with a pure gateway army since that's what you suggested in your bronze/silver section. So would it be preferable if I just maxed out then A moved into the other person's base? Also, sorry for asking this again, but what do I do against siege tanks? I usually try to contain, but they often drop inside of my base and beat me.
I'd say try to max out or go for a push at like 150+ supply.
As for siege tanks, just don't engage into them. I know I say A-move to his base but if he has lots of siege tanks, just sit back at like a tower and wait for him to push out then go get him. You don't have to have your entire army either so you can have some units back for a drop (not tons, but some) and then u have warp ins as well.
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The low league advice rests on the assumption that more supply beats less supply, always.
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On July 02 2012 01:44 Snoodles wrote: The low league advice rests on the assumption that more supply beats less supply, always.
Not always, just the vast majority of times, and that assumption is correct. This guide is very well written and everyone that puts this into practice is bound to improve, and the lower the league the more relevant this is.
Stutter stepping, blink micro and clever infestor use will win you a few games, a solid macro foundation will get you into diamond. Your choice.
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On July 02 2012 03:45 Shikada wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 01:44 Snoodles wrote: The low league advice rests on the assumption that more supply beats less supply, always. Not always, just the vast majority of times, and that assumption is correct. This guide is very well written and everyone that puts this into practice is bound to improve, and the lower the league the more relevant this is. Stutter stepping, blink micro and clever infestor use will win you a few games, a solid macro foundation will get you into diamond. Your choice.
Thank you very much.
and yeah more supply doesn't always beat less supply sure, as a zerg player I ESPECIALLY know that.
That being said, if you are at the peak supply you can be at during a certain time, and your opponent is a lower level player, his supply will be at the point where you CAN crush him with simply more supply.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
Odd, I'm bronze but I have never been able to a-move for the last 30 or so games, worked in the beginning but not anymore.
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On July 03 2012 04:37 Targe wrote: Odd, I'm bronze but I have never been able to a-move for the last 30 or so games, worked in the beginning but not anymore.
If you A-move with an army of bronze-macro supply levels, yes there is a chance you won't win.
I bet if I went and macroed on your account and A-moved my army would have no problem winning.
The point of this guide is that you need to work on getting your macro to the point that you can simply A-move and win at lower levels simply by having such a greater supply
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I'm not sure if not really teching for P Bronze/Silver is good. Sure Storm will not work out that well but tech to colossi is always good especally in PvP! People in low leagues (me included^^) can FF their ramp and if they then come at you with colossi its GG, even if your macro was better.
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On July 03 2012 08:23 animus128 wrote: I'm not sure if not really teching for P Bronze/Silver is good. Sure Storm will not work out that well but tech to colossi is always good especally in PvP! People in low leagues (me included^^) can FF their ramp and if they then come at you with colossi its GG, even if your macro was better.
I'm willing to 1v1 you as a protoss and prove this to you
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On July 03 2012 08:49 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2012 08:23 animus128 wrote: I'm not sure if not really teching for P Bronze/Silver is good. Sure Storm will not work out that well but tech to colossi is always good especally in PvP! People in low leagues (me included^^) can FF their ramp and if they then come at you with colossi its GG, even if your macro was better. I'm willing to 1v1 you as a protoss and prove this to you
well the thing is that a silver player has way worse macro than you and makes way more mistakes! a master player could win with pretty much everything, just because of the way better mechanics and understanding of the game.
anyway i overall like your guide worker production seems like the biggest issue in low leagues, by far (from personal experience)!
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On July 03 2012 08:53 animus128 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2012 08:49 MrLlama wrote:On July 03 2012 08:23 animus128 wrote: I'm not sure if not really teching for P Bronze/Silver is good. Sure Storm will not work out that well but tech to colossi is always good especally in PvP! People in low leagues (me included^^) can FF their ramp and if they then come at you with colossi its GG, even if your macro was better. I'm willing to 1v1 you as a protoss and prove this to you well the thing is that a silver player has way worse macro than you and makes way more mistakes! a master player could win with pretty much everything, just because of the way better mechanics and understanding of the game. anyway i overall like your guide worker production seems like the biggest issue in low leagues, by far (from personal experience)!
hehehe exactly my point. I wasn't going to tech or micro my army, I was simply going to macro up and send it at your base. I think if a silver player can simply try and copy the macro portion of my game (not any other parts) then they will find themselves advancing
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On July 03 2012 06:20 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2012 04:37 Targe wrote: Odd, I'm bronze but I have never been able to a-move for the last 30 or so games, worked in the beginning but not anymore.
If you A-move with an army of bronze-macro supply levels, yes there is a chance you won't win. I bet if I went and macroed on your account and A-moved my army would have no problem winning. The point of this guide is that you need to work on getting your macro to the point that you can simply A-move and win at lower levels simply by having such a greater supply
I've been using Filter's guide, at first I was able to just a-move and win, but It's got so that most players I play are either a fast cheese or can macro well for the first 10-15 minutes.
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On July 03 2012 08:49 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2012 08:23 animus128 wrote: I'm not sure if not really teching for P Bronze/Silver is good. Sure Storm will not work out that well but tech to colossi is always good especally in PvP! People in low leagues (me included^^) can FF their ramp and if they then come at you with colossi its GG, even if your macro was better. I'm willing to 1v1 you as a protoss and prove this to you
My mass hellions won against stalkers and colossus. Weird huh?
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On July 03 2012 16:39 Targe wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2012 06:20 MrLlama wrote:On July 03 2012 04:37 Targe wrote: Odd, I'm bronze but I have never been able to a-move for the last 30 or so games, worked in the beginning but not anymore.
If you A-move with an army of bronze-macro supply levels, yes there is a chance you won't win. I bet if I went and macroed on your account and A-moved my army would have no problem winning. The point of this guide is that you need to work on getting your macro to the point that you can simply A-move and win at lower levels simply by having such a greater supply I've been using Filter's guide, at first I was able to just a-move and win, but It's got so that most players I play are either a fast cheese or can macro well for the first 10-15 minutes.
if they could macro well for the first 10-15 minutes, they would be in Diamond-Masters league.
Once again I think it's hard to realize such a difference in macro until you can either A. do it yourself B. play against a bronze-gold who you think macros well, then play against a Masters player who actually macros well.
Also in regards to cheese, I've been working on coaching a kid who is struggling to defend cheese...the reason he struggles though is because when he is cheesed his macro falls to complete crap. We've been practicing 4gates against him and he is definitely at the point where he could hold off a bronze-gold 4gate, but his problem is whenever I 4gate him, he suddenly just spends all of his time with his army microing back and forth and then he supply blocks, builds up 100 energy on each queen, stockpiles money, and then he dies after 8 waves of a 4gate where he should have basically already won and forced me back to nothing simply because he has 1300 minerals in the bank and no extra larva to use it on.
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France9034 Posts
Pretty good tips, i'll definitely give a try. As a platinum player, i find myself constantly trying to micro drops/ do multipronged attacks, and though it sometimes works, the problem is that if it fails, i have like 4 barracks/2 fact/1-2 starport less than i should have at this moment...
This guide made me realize that when i look back at my games...
Definitely worth giving a try, there's some interesting advices.
Thanks !
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As a silver league player I agree in part, however it is difficult in the lower leagues as roach rushes, 4 gates, dt rushes, banling busts, proxy gates and rax happen all the time. players learn one build well and execute them well. Believe me surviving to 12 minutes can be difficult. If you don't learn to spot the heavy pressure builds and all ins you just loose. Believe me the lower leagues are scary.
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I see a lot of players on here who disregard the good advice because:
1) they want to win NOW instead of moving up the ladder LATER.
2) they don't want to practice macro because it's boring - they like micro'ing, even when they are bad at multi-tasking.
3) they don't realize that if you have a bigger army and they get banshee rushed, they can just go crush the opponent's base while some static AA builds back home, instead of getting distracted by the bancheese. Best case, they pull the banshee(s) back to defend their own base, so you have time to build AA and get back to macro'ing.
4) they don't understand that just because someone is in a certain league, it doesn't always mean they are that level of player - they could be on a meteoric rise up or a slow slide downward. You WILL lose (or win) games in your league to players who actually shouldn't be in that league. This doesn't make this a "typical match" in X league.
5) they don't understand the concept of a "build order loss". Sometimes you go with something standard, and you lose to cheese, or the one thing that will counter you. This doesn't mean that what you are doing is wrong, just that you haven't learned the specific defense. Again, if you are practising MACRO, this loss shouldn't matter to you - you are not playing to win. You are playing to IMPROVE. If you are low-ranked, learning the counter to every cheese MIGHT win you some games, but you'll lose the others due to bad macro, and anti-cheese won't get you to Diamond (or whatever your goal is). If you play enough games, while focusing on macro, you'll eventually learn anti-cheese, and this anti-cheese will partly be macro-based. That is, it will be way easier to defend cheese when your macro is rock-solid - one of the reasons people cheese is that even if the cheese fails or does poorly, it throws off the person's build order so bad that they can be crushed later.
6) They don't believe that a Zerg can 2-base vs. another race's 2-base (with good macro). This is untrue - you just have to attack them at the right time, before all their tech kicks in (a friend also demonstrated this to me using a 2-base Roach+Drop+Nydus all-in that hits at about 11 mins). You can also use Infestor-Ling or a variety of other builds that get through walls (high-econ baneling bust is another classic).
Personally, I love the idea of better macro protecting against cheese and harass. In fact, there was one Nestea game casted by Tastosis, where one of the commentators mentioned this exact thing: Nestea's defense vs. Hellion Harass was actually "build more drones". He could AFFORD to lose the drones because making more units for defense actually SLOWED HIM DOWN, and if the harass DIDN'T come, he was even FURTHER behind for making units! Yes, we've all lost games where the hellions just wrecked everything, but in others, the hellions didn't come or were easily fended off and then you CRUSHED him with a big push of your own at 7-10 mins... and you thought it was just because he sucked.
My own piece of advice, as Plat Zerg who plays intermittently and has to brush the dust off frequently, is to go play the computer on Medium until you can do a 12-ish minute Roach 200/200 push. The point of the exercise isn't the Roach Push, but that it gives you a basis for an exercise in not getting supply blocked, hitting your injects, taking enough gas and at the right times, and keeping the "build units" part fairly simple. The reason for the Medium computer is that it attacks about the time when an FFE protoss would come harass you with a few units. Try it! It improved my play a great deal.
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The Bronze/Silver advice for terran seems to suggest to only build marines(?)
Or did I read it wrong? :/
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On July 04 2012 01:03 DeZrog wrote: I see a lot of players on here who disregard the good advice because:
1) they want to win NOW instead of moving up the ladder LATER.
2) they don't want to practice macro because it's boring - they like micro'ing, even when they are bad at multi-tasking.
3) they don't realize that if you have a bigger army and they get banshee rushed, they can just go crush the opponent's base while some static AA builds back home, instead of getting distracted by the bancheese. Best case, they pull the banshee(s) back to defend their own base, so you have time to build AA and get back to macro'ing.
4) they don't understand that just because someone is in a certain league, it doesn't always mean they are that level of player - they could be on a meteoric rise up or a slow slide downward. You WILL lose (or win) games in your league to players who actually shouldn't be in that league. This doesn't make this a "typical match" in X league.
5) they don't understand the concept of a "build order loss". Sometimes you go with something standard, and you lose to cheese, or the one thing that will counter you. This doesn't mean that what you are doing is wrong, just that you haven't learned the specific defense. Again, if you are practising MACRO, this loss shouldn't matter to you - you are not playing to win. You are playing to IMPROVE. If you are low-ranked, learning the counter to every cheese MIGHT win you some games, but you'll lose the others due to bad macro, and anti-cheese won't get you to Diamond (or whatever your goal is). If you play enough games, while focusing on macro, you'll eventually learn anti-cheese, and this anti-cheese will partly be macro-based. That is, it will be way easier to defend cheese when your macro is rock-solid - one of the reasons people cheese is that even if the cheese fails or does poorly, it throws off the person's build order so bad that they can be crushed later.
6) They don't believe that a Zerg can 2-base vs. another race's 2-base (with good macro). This is untrue - you just have to attack them at the right time, before all their tech kicks in (a friend also demonstrated this to me using a 2-base Roach+Drop+Nydus all-in that hits at about 11 mins). You can also use Infestor-Ling or a variety of other builds that get through walls (high-econ baneling bust is another classic).
Personally, I love the idea of better macro protecting against cheese and harass. In fact, there was one Nestea game casted by Tastosis, where one of the commentators mentioned this exact thing: Nestea's defense vs. Hellion Harass was actually "build more drones". He could AFFORD to lose the drones because making more units for defense actually SLOWED HIM DOWN, and if the harass DIDN'T come, he was even FURTHER behind for making units! Yes, we've all lost games where the hellions just wrecked everything, but in others, the hellions didn't come or were easily fended off and then you CRUSHED him with a big push of your own at 7-10 mins... and you thought it was just because he sucked.
My own piece of advice, as Plat Zerg who plays intermittently and has to brush the dust off frequently, is to go play the computer on Medium until you can do a 12-ish minute Roach 200/200 push. The point of the exercise isn't the Roach Push, but that it gives you a basis for an exercise in not getting supply blocked, hitting your injects, taking enough gas and at the right times, and keeping the "build units" part fairly simple. The reason for the Medium computer is that it attacks about the time when an FFE protoss would come harass you with a few units. Try it! It improved my play a great deal.
I'm probably going to steal this comment and put it somewhere in the bottom of the guide.
Are you sure you're only platinum? because you definitely understand the game and exactly what I'm trying to prove.
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On July 04 2012 03:38 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2012 01:03 DeZrog wrote: I see a lot of players on here who disregard the good advice because:
1) they want to win NOW instead of moving up the ladder LATER.
2) they don't want to practice macro because it's boring - they like micro'ing, even when they are bad at multi-tasking.
3) they don't realize that if you have a bigger army and they get banshee rushed, they can just go crush the opponent's base while some static AA builds back home, instead of getting distracted by the bancheese. Best case, they pull the banshee(s) back to defend their own base, so you have time to build AA and get back to macro'ing.
4) they don't understand that just because someone is in a certain league, it doesn't always mean they are that level of player - they could be on a meteoric rise up or a slow slide downward. You WILL lose (or win) games in your league to players who actually shouldn't be in that league. This doesn't make this a "typical match" in X league.
5) they don't understand the concept of a "build order loss". Sometimes you go with something standard, and you lose to cheese, or the one thing that will counter you. This doesn't mean that what you are doing is wrong, just that you haven't learned the specific defense. Again, if you are practising MACRO, this loss shouldn't matter to you - you are not playing to win. You are playing to IMPROVE. If you are low-ranked, learning the counter to every cheese MIGHT win you some games, but you'll lose the others due to bad macro, and anti-cheese won't get you to Diamond (or whatever your goal is). If you play enough games, while focusing on macro, you'll eventually learn anti-cheese, and this anti-cheese will partly be macro-based. That is, it will be way easier to defend cheese when your macro is rock-solid - one of the reasons people cheese is that even if the cheese fails or does poorly, it throws off the person's build order so bad that they can be crushed later.
6) They don't believe that a Zerg can 2-base vs. another race's 2-base (with good macro). This is untrue - you just have to attack them at the right time, before all their tech kicks in (a friend also demonstrated this to me using a 2-base Roach+Drop+Nydus all-in that hits at about 11 mins). You can also use Infestor-Ling or a variety of other builds that get through walls (high-econ baneling bust is another classic).
Personally, I love the idea of better macro protecting against cheese and harass. In fact, there was one Nestea game casted by Tastosis, where one of the commentators mentioned this exact thing: Nestea's defense vs. Hellion Harass was actually "build more drones". He could AFFORD to lose the drones because making more units for defense actually SLOWED HIM DOWN, and if the harass DIDN'T come, he was even FURTHER behind for making units! Yes, we've all lost games where the hellions just wrecked everything, but in others, the hellions didn't come or were easily fended off and then you CRUSHED him with a big push of your own at 7-10 mins... and you thought it was just because he sucked.
My own piece of advice, as Plat Zerg who plays intermittently and has to brush the dust off frequently, is to go play the computer on Medium until you can do a 12-ish minute Roach 200/200 push. The point of the exercise isn't the Roach Push, but that it gives you a basis for an exercise in not getting supply blocked, hitting your injects, taking enough gas and at the right times, and keeping the "build units" part fairly simple. The reason for the Medium computer is that it attacks about the time when an FFE protoss would come harass you with a few units. Try it! It improved my play a great deal. I'm probably going to steal this comment and put it somewhere in the bottom of the guide. Are you sure you're only platinum? because you definitely understand the game and exactly what I'm trying to prove.
A lot of people have good understanding but the hands and mouse accuracy of a drunkard.
Its understanding timing and just what those extra workers and tech buildings on time mean. Go ahead and try forgetting to make your gas or roach/evo vs in ZvP vs a masters Protoss going 2 base mass-gate and realize instead of microing your lings around his zealot(s) at 7:00-7:30 and then not realizing you had missed 1 inject at each hatch and gotten supply blocked at 52. Pretty sure that'll drive the message of building/tech timings home.
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On July 04 2012 03:52 sCCrooked wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2012 03:38 MrLlama wrote:On July 04 2012 01:03 DeZrog wrote: I see a lot of players on here who disregard the good advice because:
1) they want to win NOW instead of moving up the ladder LATER.
2) they don't want to practice macro because it's boring - they like micro'ing, even when they are bad at multi-tasking.
3) they don't realize that if you have a bigger army and they get banshee rushed, they can just go crush the opponent's base while some static AA builds back home, instead of getting distracted by the bancheese. Best case, they pull the banshee(s) back to defend their own base, so you have time to build AA and get back to macro'ing.
4) they don't understand that just because someone is in a certain league, it doesn't always mean they are that level of player - they could be on a meteoric rise up or a slow slide downward. You WILL lose (or win) games in your league to players who actually shouldn't be in that league. This doesn't make this a "typical match" in X league.
5) they don't understand the concept of a "build order loss". Sometimes you go with something standard, and you lose to cheese, or the one thing that will counter you. This doesn't mean that what you are doing is wrong, just that you haven't learned the specific defense. Again, if you are practising MACRO, this loss shouldn't matter to you - you are not playing to win. You are playing to IMPROVE. If you are low-ranked, learning the counter to every cheese MIGHT win you some games, but you'll lose the others due to bad macro, and anti-cheese won't get you to Diamond (or whatever your goal is). If you play enough games, while focusing on macro, you'll eventually learn anti-cheese, and this anti-cheese will partly be macro-based. That is, it will be way easier to defend cheese when your macro is rock-solid - one of the reasons people cheese is that even if the cheese fails or does poorly, it throws off the person's build order so bad that they can be crushed later.
6) They don't believe that a Zerg can 2-base vs. another race's 2-base (with good macro). This is untrue - you just have to attack them at the right time, before all their tech kicks in (a friend also demonstrated this to me using a 2-base Roach+Drop+Nydus all-in that hits at about 11 mins). You can also use Infestor-Ling or a variety of other builds that get through walls (high-econ baneling bust is another classic).
Personally, I love the idea of better macro protecting against cheese and harass. In fact, there was one Nestea game casted by Tastosis, where one of the commentators mentioned this exact thing: Nestea's defense vs. Hellion Harass was actually "build more drones". He could AFFORD to lose the drones because making more units for defense actually SLOWED HIM DOWN, and if the harass DIDN'T come, he was even FURTHER behind for making units! Yes, we've all lost games where the hellions just wrecked everything, but in others, the hellions didn't come or were easily fended off and then you CRUSHED him with a big push of your own at 7-10 mins... and you thought it was just because he sucked.
My own piece of advice, as Plat Zerg who plays intermittently and has to brush the dust off frequently, is to go play the computer on Medium until you can do a 12-ish minute Roach 200/200 push. The point of the exercise isn't the Roach Push, but that it gives you a basis for an exercise in not getting supply blocked, hitting your injects, taking enough gas and at the right times, and keeping the "build units" part fairly simple. The reason for the Medium computer is that it attacks about the time when an FFE protoss would come harass you with a few units. Try it! It improved my play a great deal. I'm probably going to steal this comment and put it somewhere in the bottom of the guide. Are you sure you're only platinum? because you definitely understand the game and exactly what I'm trying to prove. A lot of people have good understanding but the hands and mouse accuracy of a drunkard. Its understanding timing and just what those extra workers and tech buildings on time mean. Go ahead and try forgetting to make your gas or roach/evo vs in ZvP vs a masters Protoss going 2 base mass-gate and realize instead of microing your lings around his zealot(s) at 7:00-7:30 and then not realizing you had missed 1 inject at each hatch and gotten supply blocked at 52. Pretty sure that'll drive the message of building/tech timings home.
Believe me, you're preaching to the choir here. I had to learn this the hard way. 1 supply block or 1 missed inject has easily been the difference between a win and loss for me.
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On July 04 2012 01:03 DeZrog wrote: I see a lot of players on here who disregard the good advice because...<cut>
On July 04 2012 01:03 MrLlama wrote:
I'm probably going to steal this comment and put it somewhere in the bottom of the guide.
Are you sure you're only platinum? because you definitely understand the game and exactly what I'm trying to prove.
Thanks - that's high praise. I'm Plat probably because I don't have enough time to play to keep my skills high - I've kinda hit the point where brushing the rust off is all I can keep up with, and that has put a ceiling on improvement.
You can feel free to steal any parts of my comment, and adapt as you will - maybe it will wake people up to what they have to do to improve, even though they don't want to hear it.
I wanted to add one more thing to those feeling discouraged: some people have a better start than others at SC2 because they have a higher native ability to do automatic repetition and/or multi-tasking, or fast hands for micro or whatever. Most of all (I've realized) that time playing is really what improves you... IF you are willing to spend that time doing the things you need to do to improve - and at the top of that list is macro, which means getting the "building things" so automatic that you can afford the brainspace to do other things, like scout, micro, etc. If you're really serious about SC2, you have to put in some "practice", similar to any sport. If you are only going to play the game for fun then stop worrying about your rank and stop arguing with people who HAVE put in the work and have seen results.
Also - MrLlama never said "scouting is bad" or "micro is bad". He said "macro is more important - worry about the rest later". This applies EVEN IF ractising your macro (at the expense of other things) will lose you games in your current league! (but it will win you more games later).
DeZrog
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On July 04 2012 04:06 MrLlama wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2012 03:52 sCCrooked wrote:On July 04 2012 03:38 MrLlama wrote:On July 04 2012 01:03 DeZrog wrote: I see a lot of players on here who disregard the good advice because:
1) they want to win NOW instead of moving up the ladder LATER.
2) they don't want to practice macro because it's boring - they like micro'ing, even when they are bad at multi-tasking.
3) they don't realize that if you have a bigger army and they get banshee rushed, they can just go crush the opponent's base while some static AA builds back home, instead of getting distracted by the bancheese. Best case, they pull the banshee(s) back to defend their own base, so you have time to build AA and get back to macro'ing.
4) they don't understand that just because someone is in a certain league, it doesn't always mean they are that level of player - they could be on a meteoric rise up or a slow slide downward. You WILL lose (or win) games in your league to players who actually shouldn't be in that league. This doesn't make this a "typical match" in X league.
5) they don't understand the concept of a "build order loss". Sometimes you go with something standard, and you lose to cheese, or the one thing that will counter you. This doesn't mean that what you are doing is wrong, just that you haven't learned the specific defense. Again, if you are practising MACRO, this loss shouldn't matter to you - you are not playing to win. You are playing to IMPROVE. If you are low-ranked, learning the counter to every cheese MIGHT win you some games, but you'll lose the others due to bad macro, and anti-cheese won't get you to Diamond (or whatever your goal is). If you play enough games, while focusing on macro, you'll eventually learn anti-cheese, and this anti-cheese will partly be macro-based. That is, it will be way easier to defend cheese when your macro is rock-solid - one of the reasons people cheese is that even if the cheese fails or does poorly, it throws off the person's build order so bad that they can be crushed later.
6) They don't believe that a Zerg can 2-base vs. another race's 2-base (with good macro). This is untrue - you just have to attack them at the right time, before all their tech kicks in (a friend also demonstrated this to me using a 2-base Roach+Drop+Nydus all-in that hits at about 11 mins). You can also use Infestor-Ling or a variety of other builds that get through walls (high-econ baneling bust is another classic).
Personally, I love the idea of better macro protecting against cheese and harass. In fact, there was one Nestea game casted by Tastosis, where one of the commentators mentioned this exact thing: Nestea's defense vs. Hellion Harass was actually "build more drones". He could AFFORD to lose the drones because making more units for defense actually SLOWED HIM DOWN, and if the harass DIDN'T come, he was even FURTHER behind for making units! Yes, we've all lost games where the hellions just wrecked everything, but in others, the hellions didn't come or were easily fended off and then you CRUSHED him with a big push of your own at 7-10 mins... and you thought it was just because he sucked.
My own piece of advice, as Plat Zerg who plays intermittently and has to brush the dust off frequently, is to go play the computer on Medium until you can do a 12-ish minute Roach 200/200 push. The point of the exercise isn't the Roach Push, but that it gives you a basis for an exercise in not getting supply blocked, hitting your injects, taking enough gas and at the right times, and keeping the "build units" part fairly simple. The reason for the Medium computer is that it attacks about the time when an FFE protoss would come harass you with a few units. Try it! It improved my play a great deal. I'm probably going to steal this comment and put it somewhere in the bottom of the guide. Are you sure you're only platinum? because you definitely understand the game and exactly what I'm trying to prove. A lot of people have good understanding but the hands and mouse accuracy of a drunkard. Its understanding timing and just what those extra workers and tech buildings on time mean. Go ahead and try forgetting to make your gas or roach/evo vs in ZvP vs a masters Protoss going 2 base mass-gate and realize instead of microing your lings around his zealot(s) at 7:00-7:30 and then not realizing you had missed 1 inject at each hatch and gotten supply blocked at 52. Pretty sure that'll drive the message of building/tech timings home. Believe me, you're preaching to the choir here. I had to learn this the hard way. 1 supply block or 1 missed inject has easily been the difference between a win and loss for me.
I meant the bottom part there more for lower mineral-leaguers and not masters but yes 1 mistake like that will cost you a masters or higher game.
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On July 02 2012 03:45 Shikada wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 01:44 Snoodles wrote: The low league advice rests on the assumption that more supply beats less supply, always. Not always, just the vast majority of times, and that assumption is correct. This guide is very well written and everyone that puts this into practice is bound to improve, and the lower the league the more relevant this is. Stutter stepping, blink micro and clever infestor use will win you a few games, a solid macro foundation will get you into diamond. Your choice.
I disagree. I came back to SC after a while and switched to terran + changed all my hotkeys and used filter's guide straight up to diamond in a week. That's where I had the problem of routinely losing TvPs where I was 50 supply ahead literally every game. The "more army will win" implies that you micro at least better than your opponent on some level.
The problem with a lot of these guides is that no matter how solid your macro is you're never going to get out of diamond if you can't dodge storms or split against banelings at a reasonable level.
That said, I think micro should be the number one focus for terran players since it's a lot harder to develop. If your micro is excellent and carries you to diamond, then there are only a few tiny changes to make to catapult into masters. As opposed to fundamentally learning how/when/where to engage from scratch because you've been a-moving your armies and winning off macro forever.
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On July 04 2012 05:17 DeZrog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2012 01:03 DeZrog wrote: I see a lot of players on here who disregard the good advice because...<cut>
Show nested quote +On July 04 2012 01:03 MrLlama wrote:
I'm probably going to steal this comment and put it somewhere in the bottom of the guide.
Are you sure you're only platinum? because you definitely understand the game and exactly what I'm trying to prove. Thanks - that's high praise. I'm Plat probably because I don't have enough time to play to keep my skills high - I've kinda hit the point where brushing the rust off is all I can keep up with, and that has put a ceiling on improvement. You can feel free to steal any parts of my comment, and adapt as you will - maybe it will wake people up to what they have to do to improve, even though they don't want to hear it. I wanted to add one more thing to those feeling discouraged: some people have a better start than others at SC2 because they have a higher native ability to do automatic repetition and/or multi-tasking, or fast hands for micro or whatever. Most of all (I've realized) that time playing is really what improves you... IF you are willing to spend that time doing the things you need to do to improve - and at the top of that list is macro, which means getting the "building things" so automatic that you can afford the brainspace to do other things, like scout, micro, etc. If you're really serious about SC2, you have to put in some "practice", similar to any sport. If you are only going to play the game for fun then stop worrying about your rank and stop arguing with people who HAVE put in the work and have seen results. Also - MrLlama never said "scouting is bad" or "micro is bad". He said "macro is more important - worry about the rest later". This applies EVEN IF practising your macro, at the expense of other things, will lose you games in your current league! (but it will win you more games later). DeZrog
Crap - what the hell? I went to edit a few things in the post and created a duplicate.
Help help! I need moderation! (you can delete this post).
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So many people in this thread that say stuff like "mutas require micro but it requires a lot of micto to defend vs them" etc. OP said you shouldn't go banshee etc for a reason. The reason is that you dont improve by winning, you have improved when you look at your supply a realise that this time you got your injects/chronoboost/mules down a tad better than you did last week or that you timed your expand better. And the next time you play you remember that and start to improve even more. losing or winning a game doesn't matter as long as you remember this and practice.
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if you want me 2 upload a replay i can...but i have tried the filterSC way of expo at 3:45 50 scv and 100 food at 10 mins and its weird bc i cant seem to get into gold. im 2v2 diamond(ik its a team thing) but i cant seem to win against top gold ppl. mid gold is no problem. but my trend seems to be (im top 8 silver btw) silver=win, top silver=win, mid gold=win, top gold=failboat. i cant seem to get promoted using both of your strats. ne tips?
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On July 04 2012 06:02 Seiferz wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 03:45 Shikada wrote:On July 02 2012 01:44 Snoodles wrote: The low league advice rests on the assumption that more supply beats less supply, always. Not always, just the vast majority of times, and that assumption is correct. This guide is very well written and everyone that puts this into practice is bound to improve, and the lower the league the more relevant this is. Stutter stepping, blink micro and clever infestor use will win you a few games, a solid macro foundation will get you into diamond. Your choice. I disagree. I came back to SC after a while and switched to terran + changed all my hotkeys and used filter's guide straight up to diamond in a week. That's where I had the problem of routinely losing TvPs where I was 50 supply ahead literally every game. The "more army will win" implies that you micro at least better than your opponent on some level. The problem with a lot of these guides is that no matter how solid your macro is you're never going to get out of diamond if you can't dodge storms or split against banelings at a reasonable level. That said, I think micro should be the number one focus for terran players since it's a lot harder to develop. If your micro is excellent and carries you to diamond, then there are only a few tiny changes to make to catapult into masters. As opposed to fundamentally learning how/when/where to engage from scratch because you've been a-moving your armies and winning off macro forever.
I think that your post confirms what he is saying, though. The very point is that macro will carry you relatively high up, and that people in lower leagues (i.e., roughly bronze - plat) could improve greatly without learning some super tricky new build, or marine-splitting like MKP. Rather, it is very possible to make it all the way to diamond through the brute force that superior macro gives you.
In his original post, he says that in diamond is when you should have decent enough macro that you can start looking outside of your base more and more. In the Terran advice, he specifically says to start practicing splitting, etc. So really, your post lines up perfectly with what he says. You were able to win simply by macroing much better than your opponents up to this point, and now it's time to start practicing other stuff (while keeping up with all the good macro behind it!). Afterwards, you'll be pooping on diamond folks as easily as you did all the other leagues to get there in one week, because you'll have the control AND a 50 supply lead.
In your last paragraph, you say that you can micro your way to diamond, and then make "a few tiny changes" in terms of macro to go up to Master's. You say that is easier to learn how to macro than it is to learn how to engage. To me, it seems like learning to split, do multi-prong attacks, not run into banelings/storms/colossus/etc. fall under the "tiny changes" category, while macroing well is a much longer and more difficult process. Half the challenge of it is learning to do it while doing those engagements. If someone doesn't know how to macro at all, wouldn't it be easier to learn it without looking at their army, versus trying to learn it while still performing all those fun micro tricks? That's where macro usually falls apart. So these guides emphasize the importance of a solid macro foundation, where you then lay micro/finesse unit control on top. Learn to how to build an army before you learn how to use it, essentially.
No one is saying that you can a-click a ball of marines up to Grandmaster's. These guides just emphasize the importance of the macro aspect, which a lot of people in the game seem to underestimate (and perform sub-optimally, especially when worrying too much about control, etc.). To play at high levels, you need the good unit control, but you also need to macro extremely well behind it.
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I'm loving the written guides they look very helpful. I'll try them out when I hop online and I can completely understand where you are coming from with the misused APM. Thanks!
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On July 04 2012 06:26 Parskatt wrote: So many people in this thread that say stuff like "mutas require micro but it requires a lot of micto to defend vs them" etc. OP said you shouldn't go banshee etc for a reason. The reason is that you dont improve by winning, you have improved when you look at your supply a realise that this time you got your injects/chronoboost/mules down a tad better than you did last week or that you timed your expand better. And the next time you play you remember that and start to improve even more. losing or winning a game doesn't matter as long as you remember this and practice.
Exactly!
And thats why OP tells bronze-silver player only to build MM, gateways units or roach/hydra cause theres more important things to worry about than unit comps (worker producton, infrastructure and armyproduction).
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First post!!!!!!! (been a lurker for at least 3 years)
I have been playing since the beta and I'm overwhelmed sometimes at how unnatural being good at games is for me. I've never been past bronze except after placement matches where I get put into high silver. Even with COD4 or fps games going way back to CS 1.6, I could never best my opponents.
With that being said, I think SC2 has the most potential as being a game I can see some real improvement based on regimented timing practice.
When I think about it, maybe I've been approaching all gaming the wrong way, not retaining lessons I should have been paying attention to.
I think this post more than others, starts to educate people in the sense that it stresses the importance of self reflection. I always fall into the trap of viewing the game from my opponent's end telling myself what they did was just too 1337 s4uce, and I have a life outside of practicing my keyboard mouse dexterity.
Identifying and targeting personal weakness should go further than merely being humble. Improvement requires being humble with the right recipe of competitiveness and investigative reasoning. Masters are furious reasoners.
Like many olympic atheletes claim. Winning (in their category) is 10% physcial, 90% mental, and I'm not talking about ping pong here.
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All the posts saying that that bronze/silver you can't just macro and defend against cheese just isn't correct, earlier in this thread i was of the same opinion, but i have worked hard on my macro, doing a 1rax expo, into 3rax with starports, BUT, i just made sure that i kept my macro up. If i miss a marine or 2, it isnt the end of the world, because if you defend well, bunkers, pulling scv's, then you can hold safely. i am getting regulalrly 4gated, because they see me, expo, and i just hold it off, because any timings they have, i just have too much supply, for them to win.
Im a top 8 silver, but im playing against plats/top golds, and still holding, and winning, because as long as you do hold it off, your 2 base v 1 base, and its just almost auto pilot to victory then.
Im not necessary winning in macro games v these levels, but if they try and do timings off of 1 and even 2 base, if you just macro hard, and keep up with production constantly and consistenly, at this level you will find yourself, way ahead in supply.
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On July 04 2012 08:24 ImANinjaBich wrote: if you want me 2 upload a replay i can...but i have tried the filterSC way of expo at 3:45 50 scv and 100 food at 10 mins and its weird bc i cant seem to get into gold. im 2v2 diamond(ik its a team thing) but i cant seem to win against top gold ppl. mid gold is no problem. but my trend seems to be (im top 8 silver btw) silver=win, top silver=win, mid gold=win, top gold=failboat. i cant seem to get promoted using both of your strats. ne tips?
I was having this problem aswell.
But this will be down to starting to understand how to use micro, when you macro hard and a move into your opponents base, at the lower levels you win, sure you might lose 5-10 supply cos you didn't engage optimally but when your 30 or 40 supply clear it doesn't matter. But losing that 5-10 supply because your engagements and micro isn't up to standard when your only say 10 supply ahead, means all the difference, if you play EU, im also top 8 silver, and we can play a few matches and i will show you what i mean.
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On July 06 2012 02:23 Postjudice(Oneye) wrote: First post!!!!!!! (been a lurker for at least 3 years)
I have been playing since the beta and I'm overwhelmed sometimes at how unnatural being good at games is for me. I've never been past bronze except after placement matches where I get put into high silver. Even with COD4 or fps games going way back to CS 1.6, I could never best my opponents.
With that being said, I think SC2 has the most potential as being a game I can see some real improvement based on regimented timing practice.
When I think about it, maybe I've been approaching all gaming the wrong way, not retaining lessons I should have been paying attention to.
I think this post more than others, starts to educate people in the sense that it stresses the importance of self reflection. I always fall into the trap of viewing the game from my opponent's end telling myself what they did was just too 1337 s4uce, and I have a life outside of practicing my keyboard mouse dexterity.
Identifying and targeting personal weakness should go further than merely being humble. Improvement requires being humble with the right recipe of competitiveness and investigative reasoning. Masters are furious reasoners.
Like many olympic atheletes claim. Winning (in their category) is 10% physcial, 90% mental, and I'm not talking about ping pong here.
Welcome to the boards You're right in that you definitely have to be humble. The higher in Masters that I climb, the worse I realize I truly am because there is still so much to learn. Yet when I was diamond, I thought I was a near perfect player. It's funny but once you accept that you really can improve and just focus on the basics and improving those, you'll do much better.
On July 06 2012 03:02 Emporium wrote: All the posts saying that that bronze/silver you can't just macro and defend against cheese just isn't correct, earlier in this thread i was of the same opinion, but i have worked hard on my macro, doing a 1rax expo, into 3rax with starports, BUT, i just made sure that i kept my macro up. If i miss a marine or 2, it isnt the end of the world, because if you defend well, bunkers, pulling scv's, then you can hold safely. i am getting regulalrly 4gated, because they see me, expo, and i just hold it off, because any timings they have, i just have too much supply, for them to win.
Im a top 8 silver, but im playing against plats/top golds, and still holding, and winning, because as long as you do hold it off, your 2 base v 1 base, and its just almost auto pilot to victory then.
Im not necessary winning in macro games v these levels, but if they try and do timings off of 1 and even 2 base, if you just macro hard, and keep up with production constantly and consistenly, at this level you will find yourself, way ahead in supply.
Glad to see this has been helpful to you. It's good to hear that people are able to find out how to hold off 4gates and timings simply by having more supply instead of just sititng there saying "well if I don't scout it perfectly then I'll lose"
Keep up the good work!
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Just wanted to say, I'm seeing great results with this technique. It's pretty exciting in itself to realize you are not panicking when you see 6 zerglings coming at you right before your 2nd queen and spine crawler pop at your natural.
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On July 09 2012 01:47 Postjudice(Oneye) wrote: Just wanted to say, I'm seeing great results with this technique. It's pretty exciting in itself to realize you are not panicking when you see 6 zerglings coming at you right before your 2nd queen and spine crawler pop at your natural.
Good to know it's working out for you
And yeah, panicking is never the right answer. Just stay cool, keep macroing, and you'll be fine.
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This thread has been very helpful to me and I am noticing a big improvement on supply leads at certain timings.
I am a silver zerg player on EU playing against top50 gold every game at the moment and I have been having good success but am now starting to have problems with other players walling off so my supply advantage doesnt actually help when I am loosing alot of it before I can actually start attacking my opponants army from tanks or mass canons. If someone is turtling like this is it better to just take all the bases I can and keep throwing units at their base or try and go for some sort of tech?
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Still don't understand this obsession of telling low level players to focus solely on macro before learning unit control and strategies. There is no reason to think that winning a match by having more units is 'more important' that winning a match through strong unit control and well thought out strategy.
I started in bronze and focused on muta/ling play. As you can imagine, this style was very taxing on my bronze league 30 apm. But you have a mineral counter in the top right of the screen forcing you to play faster and faster until you develop strong macro. This method of improving ensures that you will be playing fast enough and be skilled enough to use the units you make effectively.
On the other hand, when my friend started playing in bronze league, I taught him to play very macro focused. I directed him to FilterSC's Bronze to Master guide for terran. He wins games through having a huge unit advantage. He loses games through terrible unit control and non-existent multitasking. His apm is improving very slowly. There is no 'micro counter' that tells you when you are playing too slow and need to micro harder. There IS a 'macro counter'.
Since this thread is about misusing apm, I thought it would be worthwhile to point out that while this guide directs low level players to use their apm in a way that will win games easily, this method also leads to slower apm improvement as you rise through the ranks.
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On July 09 2012 22:23 Pleks wrote: This thread has been very helpful to me and I am noticing a big improvement on supply leads at certain timings.
I am a silver zerg player on EU playing against top50 gold every game at the moment and I have been having good success but am now starting to have problems with other players walling off so my supply advantage doesnt actually help when I am loosing alot of it before I can actually start attacking my opponants army from tanks or mass canons. If someone is turtling like this is it better to just take all the bases I can and keep throwing units at their base or try and go for some sort of tech?
Yes this is definitely a problem you will face at that level and it's where you will first start to really use decision making. I don't think you need to make tons of crazy army decisions at this time, but if your opponent is sitting there in his base with 9 siege tanks and a wall, it can be a bit tough to break and it's kind of silly to throw your army away into this. I think this is a point I should address more in the OP
If you find your opponent is mega turtled like that, don't be afraid to just sit back a bit and macro up more. Start adding stationary defenses (cannons, turrets, spines/spores) all over your bases and continue to expand so that he can't just drop you and catch you panicking. Instead, you will start to really accumulate a lot more money off of more bases and with this you can continue to add on more production facilities and maybe start working in more upgrades/tech. Eventually he is going to have to come out and then you can trade with him and remax much faster and stronger than he can.
There's a nice saying in starcraft: Whenever you're ahead, get further ahead.
Sure it's nice to know exactly when you can push to win and etc, but there's really nothing wrong with simply furthering your lead to put you in an even better position.
On July 09 2012 23:08 JustinL wrote: Still don't understand this obsession of telling low level players to focus solely on macro before learning unit control and strategies. There is no reason to think that winning a match by having more units is 'more important' that winning a match through strong unit control and well thought out strategy.
I started in bronze and focused on muta/ling play. As you can imagine, this style was very taxing on my bronze league 30 apm. But you have a mineral counter in the top right of the screen forcing you to play faster and faster until you develop strong macro. This method of improving ensures that you will be playing fast enough and be skilled enough to use the units you make effectively.
On the other hand, when my friend started playing in bronze league, I taught him to play very macro focused. I directed him to FilterSC's Bronze to Master guide for terran. He wins games through having a huge unit advantage. He loses games through terrible unit control and non-existent multitasking. His apm is improving very slowly. There is no 'micro counter' that tells you when you are playing too slow and need to micro harder. There IS a 'macro counter'.
Since this thread is about misusing apm, I thought it would be worthwhile to point out that while this guide directs low level players to use their apm in a way that will win games easily, this method also leads to slower apm improvement as you rise through the ranks.
I think you're mistaken in believing there is a 'macro counter'. There is no such thing as a macro counter, just like APM is not a true micro/multitask counter.
I see people with 50APM have better multitasking and micro than people with 100APM simply because of how much of the actions are spam and pointless vs efficient clicks.
You say you can look at your minerals as your 'macro counter', well guess what those minerals don't show: potential minerals you could have were your macro actually perfect. According to your logic, if I stay on 6 scvs all game and constantly stay at 0 minerals, my macro is impeccable because the 'macro counter' shows I have 0 minerals left all the time. Does this seem right? Of course not, because my macro is horrendous and there are thousands upon thousands of unrealized minerals there.
The reason that I (And basically every Masters+ player out there) says focus on macro is because of the effect that it has. There was a recent article released showing the effect of additional marines in your army and how much of a lead it actually gives you. The main point of the article was that being 10% ahead in the army count didn't put you 10% ahead, it put you about 50% ahead. Every additional marine that you added to your army ended up saving something like 3-4 marines by the end of the fight. It's extremely hard to wrap your head around this and I understand that, but it's just something that you have to trust we have learned.
If we 1v1 I can sit there and mass up a sweet army and attack at you, and no matter how much unit control you have or how many flanks you do, in the end I'm going to steamroll your army and there's nothing you can do about it until you finally take my advice and start learning how to REALLY macro (not using your 'macro counter' but using real benchmarks).
First benchmark: Go into a game vs an easy comp and pretend you are playing vs a FFE protoss who doesn't early pressure. This means you will have 8 minutes of free time to drone and macro. By 8:00 you should have 68+ supply. In my games where the protoss pressures and pylon blocks and all that, I will have 70+ supply everytime. In my games vs an easy comp with no pressure, I will have 86+ supply. This includes having 2x gas, a roach warren, and an evo chamber done. That's a real benchmark or 'macro counter' for you.
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On July 09 2012 23:08 JustinL wrote: Still don't understand this obsession of telling low level players to focus solely on macro before learning unit control and strategies. There is no reason to think that winning a match by having more units is 'more important' that winning a match through strong unit control and well thought out strategy.
I started in bronze and focused on muta/ling play. As you can imagine, this style was very taxing on my bronze league 30 apm. But you have a mineral counter in the top right of the screen forcing you to play faster and faster until you develop strong macro. This method of improving ensures that you will be playing fast enough and be skilled enough to use the units you make effectively.
On the other hand, when my friend started playing in bronze league, I taught him to play very macro focused. I directed him to FilterSC's Bronze to Master guide for terran. He wins games through having a huge unit advantage. He loses games through terrible unit control and non-existent multitasking. His apm is improving very slowly. There is no 'micro counter' that tells you when you are playing too slow and need to micro harder. There IS a 'macro counter'.
Since this thread is about misusing apm, I thought it would be worthwhile to point out that while this guide directs low level players to use their apm in a way that will win games easily, this method also leads to slower apm improvement as you rise through the ranks.
I'm sorry, but you and your friend are only two examples. I'm more willing to listen to every guide out there, including this one and those written for BW (you can easily find them here on TL), which do in fact advocate this method. I know it may sound strange if that's not the way you learned to play, indeed neither did I. But I recognize is it a standard that most pro players and guide writers recommend. I used it to improve and so did quite a few of my friends, but who cares about that right?
Unit control and multitasking are nothing without macro. Without a solid build order and macro it's hard to even see the balance of the game (which may explain a lot of balance whines). Yes we all like fancy unit control and micro, but I would leave that off until diamond, once your foundation is in order. And it's not like macro doesn't help you with multitasking and timing, it's not as boring as some make it out to be. When you don't have to worry about supply blocks and spending money, you will have more attention to micro units, and will more rapidly improve, than trying to do it all at once. You don't have to take my word for it, but it seems like common sense to me.
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I think a lot of high level players are out of touch with the lower ranks. Bronze and Silver aren't what they used to be. The number of players in each division is based on percentages, and a lot of new and bad players quit playing. You can still find bad players during peak hours, but otherwisw they are better than you think.
Telling people to A-Move their army and not scout in Bronze and Silver simply does not work anymore, and if you think it does, then you don't play Bronze and Silver. The skill gap has shrunk. You have to beat people ranked higher than you consistently in order to move up, and top ranked Bronze and Silver players are not A-move cream puffs.
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On July 09 2012 23:45 Shikada wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2012 23:08 JustinL wrote: Still don't understand this obsession of telling low level players to focus solely on macro before learning unit control and strategies. There is no reason to think that winning a match by having more units is 'more important' that winning a match through strong unit control and well thought out strategy.
I started in bronze and focused on muta/ling play. As you can imagine, this style was very taxing on my bronze league 30 apm. But you have a mineral counter in the top right of the screen forcing you to play faster and faster until you develop strong macro. This method of improving ensures that you will be playing fast enough and be skilled enough to use the units you make effectively.
On the other hand, when my friend started playing in bronze league, I taught him to play very macro focused. I directed him to FilterSC's Bronze to Master guide for terran. He wins games through having a huge unit advantage. He loses games through terrible unit control and non-existent multitasking. His apm is improving very slowly. There is no 'micro counter' that tells you when you are playing too slow and need to micro harder. There IS a 'macro counter'.
Since this thread is about misusing apm, I thought it would be worthwhile to point out that while this guide directs low level players to use their apm in a way that will win games easily, this method also leads to slower apm improvement as you rise through the ranks. I'm sorry, but you and your friend are only two examples. I'm more willing to listen to every guide out there, including this one and those written for BW (you can easily find them here on TL), which do in fact advocate this method. I know it may sound strange if that's not the way you learned to play, indeed neither did I. But I recognize is it a standard that most pro players and guide writers recommend. I used it to improve and so did quite a few of my friends, but who cares about that right? Unit control and multitasking are nothing without macro. Without a solid build order and macro it's hard to even see the balance of the game (which may explain a lot of balance whines). Yes we all like fancy unit control and micro, but I would leave that off until diamond, once your foundation is in order. And it's not like macro doesn't help you with multitasking and timing, it's not as boring as some make it out to be. When you don't have to worry about supply blocks and spending money, you will have more attention to micro units, and will more rapidly improve, than trying to do it all at once. You don't have to take my word for it, but it seems like common sense to me.
I think it's interesting you bring up the balance and yes you are correct that it's very hard to see balance at this level when you don't have macro/build orders.
I have beaten many players up to platinum league with only queens and drones, and every single time I win all I hear is "QUEEN OP BLAH BLAH BLAH" or "ZERP SO OP" or anything of that nature. At the same time I have won with only marines straight up to the same level and it's the same "MARINE OP TERRAN OP BLAH BLAH" crap. Then all of those players come onto the forums spewing out their zerp/terran/protoss op nonsense and this is why nobody ever takes them seriously.
On July 10 2012 01:18 sfdrew wrote: I think a lot of high level players are out of touch with the lower ranks. Bronze and Silver aren't what they used to be. The number of players in each division is based on percentages, and a lot of new and bad players quit playing. You can still find bad players during peak hours, but otherwisw they are better than you think.
Telling people to A-Move their army and not scout in Bronze and Silver simply does not work anymore, and if you think it does, then you don't play Bronze and Silver. The skill gap has shrunk. You have to beat people ranked higher than you consistently in order to move up, and top ranked Bronze and Silver players are not A-move cream puffs.
1. I coach players CURRENTLY that are in bronze/silver league. I watch replays, play against them, and watch them promote as well. 2. I play against players of all levels. Whether it's coaching or helping friends practice or whatever, I know how the different leagues play. 3. A lot of times when I play people at lower levels, I will play with restrictions such as: 1. I can't tech beyond X point, 2. I can't scout. 3. No unit micro allowed. 4. etc... Even with all of these restrictions, they attack with a 12 minute push of collo and gateway units, and my pure unupgraded marine marauder army is twice the size and just A-moves to steamroll them. Why? because I macroed and they didn't.
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Newly Silver Protoss here. Seen so many people advocate this route, I tried it today. So far, I like it: I've only won about half my games, but that's not the point now, eh?
Here's the one problem that I _do_ have: I have no idea when is right to attack in this strategy. It seems so far that many of my losses come down to timings, but then again, maybe I just need to Macro Harder.
Any more suggestions than 'a big army?'
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On July 10 2012 04:04 emmagoldman wrote: Newly Silver Protoss here. Seen so many people advocate this route, I tried it today. So far, I like it: I've only won about half my games, but that's not the point now, eh?
Here's the one problem that I _do_ have: I have no idea when is right to attack in this strategy. It seems so far that many of my losses come down to timings, but then again, maybe I just need to Macro Harder.
Any more suggestions than 'a big army?'
there are 2 things to say here 1. You'll start to get a feel for when to attack as you play more. Suddenly you'll realize if you're terran that attacking in that period he is teching to collosus is a very vulnerable time, or hitting a zerg as a protoss at 10:30 can be very tough for them. etc. 2. There's nothing wrong with just macroing more. Sure it's good to know when to attack, but there is also something called defenders advantage. You get chokes, faster reinforcements, ramps, and the defensive positioning. If he is turtled up or not attacking, nothing wrong with just chilling and macroing even harder to get a larger lead. Maybe just keep checks on him to make sure he didn't expand 10 times freely (because then maybe it's time to attack!)
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On July 10 2012 04:27 MrLlama wrote: there are 2 things to say here 1. You'll start to get a feel for when to attack as you play more. Suddenly you'll realize if you're terran that attacking in that period he is teching to collosus is a very vulnerable time, or hitting a zerg as a protoss at 10:30 can be very tough for them. etc.
Seems reasonable.
2. There's nothing wrong with just macroing more. Sure it's good to know when to attack, but there is also something called defenders advantage. You get chokes, faster reinforcements, ramps, and the defensive positioning. If he is turtled up or not attacking, nothing wrong with just chilling and macroing even harder to get a larger lead. Maybe just keep checks on him to make sure he didn't expand 10 times freely (because then maybe it's time to attack!)
Makes sense! I guess this that this fear comes out of later tech units being 'better,' so if I don't hit early enough I feel like I'll get wiped.
For example, I just played a PvP game; when I swung at 10:30 with 14 stalkers and seven zealots. he had four stalkers, four zealots, and 4 immortals, because he went two gate robo exapand. (I derived this from the replay of course, not from the game ) His counterattack with 7 immortals and 5 stalkers vs my re-'max' at 8 stalkers didn't go so well. I got crushed. I guess If I'd had a few more gateways out earlier (I had money in the bank because I didn't have enough production for my income level) I might have held him and won.
Then again, I'm paying close attention to this game, rather than games in aggregate, which is the entire point. But that game illustrates my general fear with not knowing when to attack.
I also had a bad loss due to a Terran with a cloaked banshee. Nothing I could do. It's hard to remind yourself "That's the first time I've seen that in a long, long time" and not freak out over what's essentially an outlier.
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@emmagoldman:
I am newly gold thanks to a few guides (lookup Filtersc's bronze to masters series and then when you can hit his benchmarks, look up Apollo's bronze to master's series that is faster-paced and introduces higher-level game reading).
Essentially, with protoss, (I'm not expert) the point of attacking at any early timing is to:
1.) Expand behind the attack 2.) Prevent an opponent from expanding. 3.) Fake pressure to prevent zerg droning too heavy 4.) All-in (which doesn't really fit well with learning to macro at our level)
So I guess if you think about attacks as methods of doing on of the above, it might help you to pick your timings. It is also very race dependent! Generally a protoss will attack first when attempting to take a 3rd base/denying an opponent's 3rd. Hope that helps!
-Robin
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First benchmark: Go into a game vs an easy comp and pretend you are playing vs a FFE protoss who doesn't early pressure. This means you will have 8 minutes of free time to drone and macro. By 8:00 you should have 68+ supply. In my games where the protoss pressures and pylon blocks and all that, I will have 70+ supply everytime. In my games vs an easy comp with no pressure, I will have 86+ supply. This includes having 2x gas, a roach warren, and an evo chamber done. That's a real benchmark or 'macro counter' for you.
I have been hitting 80 by 8:00 - but I can't a-move an all roach army like that into a top gold protoss and get a free win (though it worked well in silver haha).
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Hey jinx1281255!
Last I checked, Filter hadn't done toss yet, so I can't get any direct benchmarks there. Of course, I can always test against myself, anyway. I've watched Apollo's series all the way through; it's why I'm in silver atm.
Your four points might actually explain some of my anxiety; I've been doing a pretty basic 4gate most of the time, and so it tends to be very all-in-y. I'll sometimes get a longer win, but generally, if they hold me off, I lose ten minutes later.
Thanks!
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On July 10 2012 05:14 emmagoldman wrote: Hey jinx1281255!
Last I checked, Filter hadn't done toss yet, so I can't get any direct benchmarks there. Of course, I can always test against myself, anyway. I've watched Apollo's series all the way through; it's why I'm in silver atm.
Your four points might actually explain some of my anxiety; I've been doing a pretty basic 4gate most of the time, and so it tends to be very all-in-y. I'll sometimes get a longer win, but generally, if they hold me off, I lose ten minutes later.
Thanks!
Hey man! You're right, he hasn't, but the reason I would recommend it is because by listening to his in-game comments, you can learn more about timings (both for zerg and terran) that will help you to understand good times for an attack depending on what you see he is doing.
I think you just nailed the problem you are having - 4-gate tends to be more all-in than macro oriented. I would recommend forge-fast expand against zerg, 1 gate expand against terran and I have no recommendation for PvP (Watch Apollo for that haha). Just practice it against a CPU until you can execute them perfectly. That will easily take you from silver to gold.
GL HF!
-Jinx
P.S. The best part about listening to Apollo's guide is his game-sense and decision making. Watch the series again and then take a new concept into each match. For instance, in every match, make sure you know where his army is at, when he expands and what his army composition looks like using various scouting methods. This will help you to know if you are safe to expand, ready to attack or needing more units for defense. (observers are highly underrated in silver and gold leagues).
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Makes total sense. Thanks!
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On July 10 2012 05:11 jinx1281255 wrote: First benchmark: Go into a game vs an easy comp and pretend you are playing vs a FFE protoss who doesn't early pressure. This means you will have 8 minutes of free time to drone and macro. By 8:00 you should have 68+ supply. In my games where the protoss pressures and pylon blocks and all that, I will have 70+ supply everytime. In my games vs an easy comp with no pressure, I will have 86+ supply. This includes having 2x gas, a roach warren, and an evo chamber done. That's a real benchmark or 'macro counter' for you.
I have been hitting 80 by 8:00 - but I can't a-move an all roach army like that into a top gold protoss and get a free win (though it worked well in silver haha).
if you max by 11:30 you should be able to do this
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Hi, I'm a Silver Terran, and I've been following the guide for a few weeks. Every ladder game I play now I use only Marines (sometimes I use Marauders as well) and A-move into the enemy base, focusing on constant worker production and barracks construction. I'd say my success rate was about 50%. Some players I can steamroll with a superior army; others I simply can't beat no matter how many expansions and barracks I have. I think part of the problem is I often let my minerals get too high: either A) I don't keep up in Marine production; B) I don't sink extra minerals into Barracks quickly enough; C) I get supply blocked. Usually by around 10 minutes I have 100 supply and around 500-1000 min. But there are some times I think just having gas for Marauders/upgrades would help a lot. I know your guide recommends no gas usage at all, but sometimes it feels impossible to win with pure Marines.
The army compositions I have a hard time dealing with are: -Mass Roaches -Mass Banelings (less of a problem) -Mass Siege Tanks -Mass Colossus (supported by death-ball)
Some questions I have are: Do any of these comps warrant Marauder/upgrades? Should I ever need a third base in Silver league?
Let me also say that this guide has really been instructional for me. I had no idea just how crucial macro was to Starcraft until I read this. This is the first time I've practiced a build that I know what to look for and how, specifically, to improve. Thank you!
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I've worked my way up into Platinum League as Protoss, but I still find myself confused on when to get upgrades, higher tech, and my 3rd base. Most of the time, I'm too focused on warping in units so I don't have enough resources to get anything else. Any advice?
Also, you say, "HTs/storm - In earlier leagues I don't promote the idea of templar as much because they are fragile and require a little more unit micro," does this mean I should or shouldn't start using High Templar in Platinum League?
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On July 16 2012 17:05 PencilFlavor wrote: I've worked my way up into Platinum League as Protoss, but I still find myself confused on when to get upgrades, higher tech, and my 3rd base. Most of the time, I'm too focused on warping in units so I don't have enough resources to get anything else. Any advice?
Also, you say, "HTs/storm - In earlier leagues I don't promote the idea of templar as much because they are fragile and require a little more unit micro," does this mean I should or shouldn't start using High Templar in Platinum League?
I think platinum/diamond is a good time to start considering the use of high templar. The only thing I can say though is make sure they aren't hindering your performance back home. If you wind up spending all this time microing your high templar and start to drop in your macro game, you're only hurting yourself.
In terms of teching/expanding/macroing/upgrading, generally as a protoss you will expand behind your attack unless you want to go all in (this isn't always the case but for a lot of instances it is). So instead of having that next round of warp ins, you'll just keep up the pressure with the units that you have and then have taken an expansion behind it.
Upgrading should generally just be fit into your gameplay as it goes along. But the important thing to remember about upgrades is how much benefit you get for the cost. If you get +1 attack, you are adding a LOT of damage to every unit in your army for the cost of maybe 1-2 units. The damage you gain exceeds the units you lose so don't feel bad to sacrifice a unit or two so you can grab an upgrade (same goes for armor). That being said, if you are in a fight and every unit matters (like you're doing an 8gate all in and you are warping in at his base), maybe an upgrade isn't the best idea as the game will probably be decided before you gain the effects of it (and losing those couple units there will be really tide turning possibly).
high tech is something that I don't like to push too much because a lot of people rush it and sacrifice their macro early on. Get it when you feel safe is the best way to say it I suppose. If you FFE then you can decide a tech while the zerg is droning. If you gate expand then you can grab a tech after you expand and have enough gateways to have a sizeable army. Once again this is something you can do while you're attacking and applying pressure.
On July 16 2012 08:30 starimk wrote: Hi, I'm a Silver Terran, and I've been following the guide for a few weeks. Every ladder game I play now I use only Marines (sometimes I use Marauders as well) and A-move into the enemy base, focusing on constant worker production and barracks construction. I'd say my success rate was about 50%. Some players I can steamroll with a superior army; others I simply can't beat no matter how many expansions and barracks I have. I think part of the problem is I often let my minerals get too high: either A) I don't keep up in Marine production; B) I don't sink extra minerals into Barracks quickly enough; C) I get supply blocked. Usually by around 10 minutes I have 100 supply and around 500-1000 min. But there are some times I think just having gas for Marauders/upgrades would help a lot. I know your guide recommends no gas usage at all, but sometimes it feels impossible to win with pure Marines.
The army compositions I have a hard time dealing with are: -Mass Roaches -Mass Banelings (less of a problem) -Mass Siege Tanks -Mass Colossus (supported by death-ball)
Some questions I have are: Do any of these comps warrant Marauder/upgrades? Should I ever need a third base in Silver league?
Let me also say that this guide has really been instructional for me. I had no idea just how crucial macro was to Starcraft until I read this. This is the first time I've practiced a build that I know what to look for and how, specifically, to improve. Thank you!
if you're floating minerals, then you can still be adding on more production facilities and have more units out. This is very important to fix before attempting anything else because the more tech that you try to add, the more time you'll spend away from macro and it won't benefit you in the long run. Like I said before, do not be afraid to throw down more production facilities. If you have 2K minerals, throw down 6-8 more barracks and start making even more marines!
If your opponent is getting mass colossus, then you probably need to macro a little faster. Best off they should have a couple collosus and less ground army to where your army still would have a chance.
Against those army compositions though I think it's okay to possibly add some marauders. They will give your army a little bit more survivability which will be nice for sure. 1 thing to note is siege tanks. If your opponent is sitting on 2 bases with a ton of siege tanks, you will lose if you try and walk into his base. How do we fix this? We answer your next question and say take a 3rd. Take a 4th. Start to learn to tech some here. When you're ahead, get further ahead. If he wants to sit and turtle, punish him for it. then you can contain him and maybe start to add a few tanks of your own and create a little contain so it's hard for him to push out and boom eventually he starves.
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I have also been working on improving my play following my approach described on page 4, and I think I'm finally starting to see some results.
I would caution anyone following this that you won't necessarily see instant improvement, and in fact you may get worse before you get better. Trying to learn to flank has taught me that there are a lot of different ways to screw it up, and I think I've done nearly all of them. (Many of my attempts could still be described as "how to donate most of your army to your opponent in tasty bite-sized chunks"). Very often the result is worse than if I'd just 1Aed, and if I hadn't read this guide and still had the "macro and 1A to Diamond" mantra stuck in my head, I would probably have felt guilty for focusing on stuff that wasn't macro and gone back to 1Aing. This time I've been sticking with it. Along with macro analysis, I watch my replays for engagements and try to figure out what worked well, what didn't and what I should have done differently. I think I am learning and going in the right direction but it does take time, and I have had to unlearn some habits that were pretty well entrenched.
Hopefully I'm past the worst of it as I am on a bit of a winning streak right now. Time will tell if this is real or a fluke; however I think that one good sign is that, even though I don't think I am winning many games with my engagements, I am not losing nearly so many due to poor engagements as I used to. Mostly I win with better macro; in fact it feels like I win much more often with macro now, which is ironic considering I'm focusing on it less. I think I've always outmacroed my opponent in maybe 8 or 9 out of every 10 games, but previously I might throw 3 or 4 of them away due to bad engagements and lose. Now I do that much less often, maybe 1 or 2 games out of 10 (and dropping). My engagements still aren't great, but they are usually on a par with my opponent or at least close, and it seems like that's enough to make my macro lead count for a lot more.
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On July 17 2012 07:08 Chutoro wrote: I have also been working on improving my play following my approach described on page 4, and I think I'm finally starting to see some results.
I would caution anyone following this that you won't necessarily see instant improvement, and in fact you may get worse before you get better. Trying to learn to flank has taught me that there are a lot of different ways to screw it up, and I think I've done nearly all of them. (Many of my attempts could still be described as "how to donate most of your army to your opponent in tasty bite-sized chunks"). Very often the result is worse than if I'd just 1Aed, and if I hadn't read this guide and still had the "macro and 1A to Diamond" mantra stuck in my head, I would probably have felt guilty for focusing on stuff that wasn't macro and gone back to 1Aing. This time I've been sticking with it. Along with macro analysis, I watch my replays for engagements and try to figure out what worked well, what didn't and what I should have done differently. I think I am learning and going in the right direction but it does take time, and I have had to unlearn some habits that were pretty well entrenched.
Hopefully I'm past the worst of it as I am on a bit of a winning streak right now. Time will tell if this is real or a fluke; however I think that one good sign is that, even though I don't think I am winning many games with my engagements, I am not losing nearly so many due to poor engagements as I used to. Mostly I win with better macro; in fact it feels like I win much more often with macro now, which is ironic considering I'm focusing on it less. I think I've always outmacroed my opponent in maybe 8 or 9 out of every 10 games, but previously I might throw 3 or 4 of them away due to bad engagements and lose. Now I do that much less often, maybe 1 or 2 games out of 10 (and dropping). My engagements still aren't great, but they are usually on a par with my opponent or at least close, and it seems like that's enough to make my macro lead count for a lot more.
It never is easy and you won't always see instant results but I'm glad you're working on it and starting to finally get some good wins/better losses. You won't win every engagement in a game but if you can make them count for something at least WHILE maintaining better macro, you'll still stay ahead and be in the game. If you have bad macro and a bad engagement (as you saw before), you will lose and not have a chance.
Keep me updated with how you're doing!
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On July 16 2012 08:30 starimk wrote: Hi, I'm a Silver Terran, and I've been following the guide for a few weeks.
The army compositions I have a hard time dealing with are: -Mass Roaches -Mass Banelings (less of a problem) -Mass Siege Tanks -Mass Colossus (supported by death-ball)
Just as MrLlama said, marauders are good against all of those comps. You can add one gas after your 3rd barracks and that is enough to add marauders into your mix - out of 1 barracks when you are on 3 and than out of 2 when you are on 5.
This is slightly away from the OP is teaching, but get a combat shield upgrade. While this is great overall at Silver level it is especially good against banelings.
When I was in Silver league I also had a lot of problems with turtling terran with siege tanks and it was first time I needed to move away from a-moving into opponents base. First of all, against terran you need to control your army a little bit and target fire a supply deopt at their wall. If you jsut a-move to their base they will walk around like lemmings and die to one tank. With a hole in their wall a-moving into the base will start working well again. But if the tank count gets too big and your army starts dealing no damage than move on to plan B, just as OP stated in reply to you. I would just like to add, that at this point it is crucial to make sure that your opponent has no hidden third. Put a marine on every base on map and when he tries to set up a base there just a-move.
Against colossus try moving out faster. Again - when I was in silver league if protoss was rushing to collosi, he didn't have enough army to support it and my a-moved army just walked over it. If there was one or two when my first wave hit, it was not that much of a problem (and again - combat shield helps here).
Also in Silver league your games should end relatively fast. If they drag out long it is mostly due to your opponent turtling. If he does that, start working on your upgrades.
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On July 17 2012 21:16 crow_mw wrote:Show nested quote +On July 16 2012 08:30 starimk wrote: Hi, I'm a Silver Terran, and I've been following the guide for a few weeks.
The army compositions I have a hard time dealing with are: -Mass Roaches -Mass Banelings (less of a problem) -Mass Siege Tanks -Mass Colossus (supported by death-ball)
Just as MrLlama said, marauders are good against all of those comps. You can add one gas after your 3rd barracks and that is enough to add marauders into your mix - out of 1 barracks when you are on 3 and than out of 2 when you are on 5. This is slightly away from the OP is teaching, but get a combat shield upgrade. While this is great overall at Silver level it is especially good against banelings. When I was in Silver league I also had a lot of problems with turtling terran with siege tanks and it was first time I needed to move away from a-moving into opponents base. First of all, against terran you need to control your army a little bit and target fire a supply deopt at their wall. If you jsut a-move to their base they will walk around like lemmings and die to one tank. With a hole in their wall a-moving into the base will start working well again. But if the tank count gets too big and your army starts dealing no damage than move on to plan B, just as OP stated in reply to you. I would just like to add, that at this point it is crucial to make sure that your opponent has no hidden third. Put a marine on every base on map and when he tries to set up a base there just a-move. Against colossus try moving out faster. Again - when I was in silver league if protoss was rushing to collosi, he didn't have enough army to support it and my a-moved army just walked over it. If there was one or two when my first wave hit, it was not that much of a problem (and again - combat shield helps here). Also in Silver league your games should end relatively fast. If they drag out long it is mostly due to your opponent turtling. If he does that, start working on your upgrades.
Yep this is a nice addition to my post above. If you're going to want to add marauders, get that 1 gas after the 3rd rax as he said, add a tech lab or two, and now you can mix your army up a bit without too much apm to detract from your macro. If you notice you start floating a little gas, get combat shields as he said (nice upgrade that you don't have to micro to gain benefit like stim).
The collosus thing I want to re-emphasize because a lot of players seem to miss it. If your opponent is going collosus, you can kill him in the timing window that he techs up to them (at this level for sure, higher up the window is there but there are more factors). I know you aren't scouting but try pushing out around that 10minute mark where you have 100 supply I'd say. That gives you 50 scvs (should be at least this, if not, keep working on scv production) and 50 supply of army which should be very strong at this point.
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I would like to point out that even within GM level there are still tiers that seperates high gms from low gms.
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I kind of disagree with this. If a lower level player wants to harass with their drone that's fine, they'll just build up better multi tasking skills faster. If I never pushed myself then I wouldnt have the apm and multitasking to play how I want now.
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On July 17 2012 22:27 EnE wrote: I kind of disagree with this. If a lower level player wants to harass with their drone that's fine, they'll just build up better multi tasking skills faster. If I never pushed myself then I wouldnt have the apm and multitasking to play how I want now.
I mean of course there is always a different way to learn. I could say, "I never went to school and just stayed at home and read books and now I'm just as smart as kids who went to school." Even so, I still think going to school is the best way to learn as it gives you a better order to learn from a more experienced person.
Sure you can start out trying to learn long division and slowly figure it out (or maybe never figure it out, which is why a lot of people find themselves stuck), or you can learn addition first, then subtraction, then multiplication and division afterwards.
The order I'm providing is for your benefit and macro is such a great foundation because everything stems off of it (plus you learn multitasking simply by jumping around your base macroing).
On July 17 2012 22:11 kyzers0ze wrote: I would like to point out that even within GM level there are still tiers that seperates high gms from low gms.
Not only this, but the separation from players grows even more here than down low. For example: Playing a bronze or silver player really isn't very noticable for me. They both play about the same and their differences are very minimal when I look at it (one of them maybe macros a little better or has better banshee control which separates them but if you took a few days with either one of them, you could teach them a new skill that would improve them to the next level)
Yet when I play a low GM player vs a high GM player, I KNOW the difference. I can beat low GM players with good play and a little luck sometimes, even with good play and some luck, it's very hard for me to beat a high GM player. Their play is almost exponentially better than mine despite us being so close in the ranks, simply because we both have all of the fundamentals down but their ability to multitask and disrupt me throws me off my game a ton and I simply get outplayed in the end.
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I'd just like to say that your post convinced me to buy starcraft (haven't played since beta), install it on my work computer (as my home computer can't run it) and come into work at 6am to get a few games in before the day starts. Good job! The simplicity of what you're espousing has made the game much more enjoyable.
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On July 18 2012 00:34 caznitch wrote: I'd just like to say that your post convinced me to buy starcraft (haven't played since beta), install it on my work computer (as my home computer can't run it) and come into work at 6am to get a few games in before the day starts. Good job! The simplicity of what you're espousing has made the game much more enjoyable.
This is exactly the kind of influence I hope to have in SC2
Let me know if you ever need any help (PM me)!
Good luck
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When would be a good time to attack as protoss? at 10 min? at 100 supply? I'm having troubles finding a decent timing to attack at, feels weird to macro to 200 before I attack with no tech <.< Seems my opponent has "alot" of tech at that point!
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On July 28 2012 16:25 Ammoth wrote: When would be a good time to attack as protoss? at 10 min? at 100 supply? I'm having troubles finding a decent timing to attack at, feels weird to macro to 200 before I attack with no tech <.< Seems my opponent has "alot" of tech at that point!
definitely a fair question
I think as protoss you can attack at multiple points and it really depends the game but for the purpose of this guide I'd say there are a few good times to attack
80-100 supply would probably be a good one to start thinking about. this is the time that your opponent will likely be teching so you can catch him off guard here. you can also expand behind this attack if you want.
150-200 supply - anytime between here really is a good time to attack. You have a strong army and you want to be able to move out before they sit for too long building up that tech.
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Thank you very much for this info. I am a Silver Protoss player who has not played this game for awhile. I followed your build advice, and it is working great! I had a terran try a marine/scv rush cheese at about 5 min. and I handled it easily and was able to counter attack over the next three minutes and destory him. Your basics help keep unused resources to a minimum. I look forward to reading more from you.
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On August 16 2012 09:01 MyLifeforAuir44 wrote: Thank you very much for this info. I am a Silver Protoss player who has not played this game for awhile. I followed your build advice, and it is working great! I had a terran try a marine/scv rush cheese at about 5 min. and I handled it easily and was able to counter attack over the next three minutes and destory him. Your basics help keep unused resources to a minimum. I look forward to reading more from you.
keeping unused resources to a minimum is key, but only if you're maximizing the potential income that you can get (aka building workers always and not being supply blocked)
glad to know it's helping you out!
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thank you for the builds, it's a good start for me!
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I'm playing several month by this guide and thanks to it was quickly promoted to top-8 gold. Now i have some questions regarding this guide.
1. If Terran plays mass ravens with transition to battlecruisers, then according this guide in gold I can't scout his base and can use against them only cannons, zealots, sentries, colo, immortals and stalkers w/o blink, but using these units I lost even to silver Terran. But when he plays standart i crush him w/o questions.
What to do? Add phoenixes, templars with feedback and psi storm or keep suffer using zealots w/guardian shield, cannons and stalkers?
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The OP made this around 1.7 Years ago so he's not going to respond and there was no need for this to be bumped. Bash you probably want to ask that in the Protoss help me thread but I will give a quick answer.
The composition you are stating is hyper late game how did the Terran get mass reaper and battlecruisers? Did you try your best at denying expansions did you attack at the optimum time for your units? Storm is your best friend, along with Archons Void rays and Tempests, this guide is for WoL so should not be trusted for HoTs.
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