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About me, I come from a WcIII background, which i started playing when I was still cute, and then pretty seamlessly transitioned over to Sc2 when the WoL beta came out. If I am actively trying to improve I play about 10 games a day. I have stuck consistently to playing Terran and learned from imitating Pro games. I Rank top 8 diamond when i spend my bonus pool, i play at 130-160 average Apm depending on the Matchup (only slightly slower with Epm since I dont have the Hand speed to keep up spamming once the game really starts picking up) and currently I am using these following builds in the various matchups:
TvT - a variety of openings ranging from agressive or macro oriented gas first openings (wrote a guide on the timings of a gas first banshee here on Tl ), 12 gas Reaper expands into a defensive 1-1-1 and 15 gas viking raven openings.
I usually win my TvTs if i am able to outpace my opponents macro while both defending their agression well and controling their builds with some sort of early game harras because i have relatively little trouble to out position them in the midgame (overgrowth 3rd base anyone=). Yet sometimes i am loosing games to attacks that i am unprepared for, e.g: I am taking my 3rd and try to secure more space to not get caught with my pants down by a nasty 2 base Timing so i move out onto the map a bit and then i just get doom dropped and the game pretty much ends. Or it happens the other way around, i prepare for drop play an they catch me with a big frontal attack. Either way, i find it incredibly hard to be safe against everything if i dont manage to secure atleast a small early game lead that allows me to get the turret ring up without loosing the army or eco advantage.
Overall my TvT is probably my best Matchup. Even though i am rarely able to win games by sheer mechanical superiority, i feel rather comfortable with the meta and my understanding of the do's and don't of the matchup allow me to play Terrans above my league.
TvZ - Reaper hellion 3cc/banshee, or 1 rax fe 3 cc. 2Base Hellion 5 rax, 2 Rax. Are among my favorite build choices in this Matchup.
Unlike TvT tho the Zerg matchup requires more precise macro so my games vs Zerg tend to always look very very clear: I win because i have more stuff, or i lose because Zerg has endless waves of ling bane. Positional sense is just not getting rewarded as much because if you take the time to play a positional game, you are essentially giving Zerg time. And time is more valueable to Zerg then it is to Terran (i'm simplifying heavily here but you get the idea...) Thus, you need to constantly trade armies head on, while hopeing that your macro, timing and micro is good enough to beat out his. So every time i face a Zerg that is mechanically superior to me, the game becomes almost unwinnable. On the flip side, i CRUSH lesser zergs so hard that it isn't even funny. Note that i almost never get free BO wins vs Zerg.
My TvZ hovers around ~55% which is mostly due to me being able to make the most out of my marines. As my MMR starts picking up, this matchup is usually the first to decline in winrate.
TvP - Reaper fe into 3 rax/wm drop - 13 Gas 2x hellion Expand into 1-1-1 --->Mech (stole the build from Goody, it's suprisingly flexible and robust. The lategame timing with +2 mech and banshees on 3 base or with ghosts on 4 base has a really good punch)
TvP is traditionally my weak Matchup. It is far more complex and reliant on scouting then people make you believe. Just building Vikings when you see colossi or getting ghosts vs Templar doesn't get you anywhere. My biggest problem here is that even if i have better macro then my opponent, thanks to how efficient Protoss lategame is, the game is still super hard to close out. On top of that there is so much bullshit that Toss can do to you in the early game which you cannot reliably scout that the matchup feels somewhat luck based.
with around 45% winrate, TvP is my personal nightmare. I do however not see a huge difference in winrate correlateing to MMR. It really doesn't matter if i play a Master or a really good platiner, i take and give games from and to both.
So my problem is that i know for a fact that i don't have much room for improvement in a mechanical sense of way. Trust me, i tried, hard.
special note: as im writing this there is a 100 man strong riot police force and a camera team in my backyard... apparently Heiko didn't pay his rent :D
Back on topic, what i need is some advice on where i should spend future efforts to improve my game. should i just keep trying to grind my mechanical skills or do i need to figure out easier Builds/Tactics. Where do you guys think the juicy progress is at. I'm especially interested in the opinions of fellow diamond Terrans that have struggled a lot and a long time with the permanent transition to Masters. What gave you that final increase in skill? did you change your mindset or approach to the game in some sort of way? and what the hell should I be doing?
Replays: http://drop.sc/393009 Banshee Mirror TvT http://drop.sc/393008 Bio Mine TvZ http://drop.sc/393007 Bombers 3cc TvZ http://drop.sc/393018 Mech TvP http://drop.sc/393019 13 gas Hellion expand
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Hi, I'm not a diamond terran but I am a diamond protoss. [I am platinum on terran]. Here's what I see from your replay.
1) You are going for a non standard opening, gas first into reactor-ed hellions. I have no opinion on whether this is good or bad, so I will assume that it is a decent if not a good opener.
The way you play your opening is very inconsistent. You are opening gas first, so I think you are going for aggression, which you are, but you are also expanding at the same time. Also, your expansion is funded by cutting SCV production which is something that is really hurting you in early game.
At 6 minutes game time you are down 7 workers. Even with a mule to compensate you are behind in economy. As a terran, you do not want to be more than 4 workers (per mule) down vs a protoss player. This is huge in early game because thats essentially (3 scvs)*40*Minutes of game left worth of minerals you are losing out on.
The next problem is that you do literally 0 macro actions while you are doing your attack. If you are not macro'ing behind your aggression, it doesn't matter if you do alot of damage. You will still be equal or behind. You use your 700 mineral bank to throw down a factory and orbital (which I won't comment on since both are super delayed).
The problem with what you do here is that if the protoss goes for a 1 gate robo expand, which you scouted, into a gateway blink attack with an obs so your banshee's can't save you, you are 100% garenteed dead because you didn't macro behind your attack and did not add on your extra factories quick enough.
10 Minutes game time, you have killed 17 workers, Yet you are only on 32 scvs, while toss is on 34. Yes, you are ahead because of mules, but you should be winning this game hands down if you were constantly producing scvs in the early to mid game. You should at least have your natural saturated at this point in the game. If this protoss had a better defense, this game would have been over a while ago.
16 minutes into game, you move out to secure the third that you sneaked while the toss did his first attack. I don't exactly know what you are doing moving out into the middle of the map with a mech army. If you are playin mech and are not going for a 2 base all in, YOU DONT ATTACK TILL YOU ARE NEAR MAX. I have won alot of games vs mech players because I caught them while their tanks are not sieged. This is what happens here and you lose alot of your army. You can break down the rocks and use that path if you need to defend your third base.
TLDR: You need to work on your early game scv/unit production while you are attacking. If you can do this properly, I think your win rate in PvT will skyrocket. Also don't move out with mech until you are maxed. It is really easy for a protoss immortal ball to wreck your tanks if they are unsieged.
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On January 27 2015 03:07 AkashSky wrote: Hi, I'm not a diamond terran but I am a diamond protoss. [I am platinum on terran]. Here's what I see from your replay.
1) You are going for a non standard opening, gas first into reactor-ed hellions. I have no opinion on whether this is good or bad, so I will assume that it is a decent if not a good opener.
The way you play your opening is very inconsistent. You are opening gas first, so I think you are going for aggression, which you are, but you are also expanding at the same time. Also, your expansion is funded by cutting SCV production which is something that is really hurting you in early game.
At 6 minutes game time you are down 7 workers. Even with a mule to compensate you are behind in economy. As a terran, you do not want to be more than 4 workers (per mule) down vs a protoss player. This is huge in early game because thats essentially (3 scvs)*40*Minutes of game left worth of minerals you are losing out on.
The next problem is that you do literally 0 macro actions while you are doing your attack. If you are not macro'ing behind your aggression, it doesn't matter if you do alot of damage. You will still be equal or behind. You use your 700 mineral bank to throw down a factory and orbital (which I won't comment on since both are super delayed).
The problem with what you do here is that if the protoss goes for a 1 gate robo expand, which you scouted, into a gateway blink attack with an obs so your banshee's can't save you, you are 100% garenteed dead because you didn't macro behind your attack and did not add on your extra factories quick enough.
10 Minutes game time, you have killed 17 workers, Yet you are only on 32 scvs, while toss is on 34. Yes, you are ahead because of mules, but you should be winning this game hands down if you were constantly producing scvs in the early to mid game. You should at least have your natural saturated at this point in the game. If this protoss had a better defense, this game would have been over a while ago.
16 minutes into game, you move out to secure the third that you sneaked while the toss did his first attack. I don't exactly know what you are doing moving out into the middle of the map with a mech army. If you are playin mech and are not going for a 2 base all in, YOU DONT ATTACK TILL YOU ARE NEAR MAX. I have won alot of games vs mech players because I caught them while their tanks are not sieged. This is what happens here and you lose alot of your army. You can break down the rocks and use that path if you need to defend your third base.
TLDR: You need to work on your early game scv/unit production while you are attacking. If you can do this properly, I think your win rate in PvT will skyrocket. Also don't move out with mech until you are maxed. It is really easy for a protoss immortal ball to wreck your tanks if they are unsieged.
well, first off thank you for advice.
out of all the games you picked the super scrappy one ^^ , i didn´t have much experience with the build used there which is why the scv production cc timing etc seems odd and winged and it really was. But i can defenitly do that a lot better even without much practise so no worries. As for the build choice, the idea behind going for a quick reactor Factory in TvP is to be safe against Toss 1 base plays, such as oracle or blink by reactively making mines, and at the same time have a counter threat with the hellions (you can actually check that out in the other TvP game i posted). Taking the early 3rd was a gamble, I knew i was behind after his push into my natural so i had to do something to catch up... then going to defend the 3rd was only logical cuz without it mining i wouldn´t have had a chance to come back. About the moveout, i had a feeling Toss was powering pretty hard and i already defeated his army twice without loosing all my stuff and did some eco damage early on so i was pretty sure i could clean him up ez if he was being greedy.
But yea not much to say about that game really, early game was terribad, toss fucked up, and then I ended up with a lucky win.
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The Bombers TvZ replay...
Diamond Terran Here. Rank 9, 0 bonus last season. I got same issues like you. Nice TvT, regular TvP and pretty bad TvZ. Next time you must post your losses, not the games you won. Anyways in the Bombers replay, you didnt execute the BO well. You are supposed to be maxed at 12:00 and at this time you were at 129 supply and blocked. I understand you, because I try the same BO many times and know how hard is to hit the benchmark. Now, this is your real problem. Pick a BO and try to execute it perfectly. Really. Do it 100 timeas agains A.I and then try it on ladder. Even pros suffer to do it perfectly. This is what keeps you in diamond. AS you can see Bomber got 2nd Factory and upgrading mines and the 3rd landed at 9:00. Go check his replay on a thread here in TL and you will see. Just compare your execution with his and you will understand how far are you from doing it well.Its all about mechanics, because you seem to know what to do and the timings. I am stuck in Diamond as well, because of my multitasking. I just cant macro and micro at the same time. Cant hit the benchmark of my BOs and thats why I only can make it into the top 10 Diamond.
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As Dvriel said, id suggest picking 1 build order per matchup from a progamer and follow that. Practicing build orders vs AI is key at first so you dont have to adapt your build to your enemy and you can focus purely on the build.
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