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Hi all,
Lots of threads floating around strat and general on stuff like "how can I get out of bronze league?" or "what do I need to do to get into diamond?" etc. etc. I hope to provide general guidelines that will hopefully provide an "order" with which to learn things. Day9 does a great job on reminding us to focus on the basics, but SC2 is a complex game and there are a lot of basics!
I am by no means a pro player, but that's exactly why I'm qualified to write this. I had only basic BW experience (ICCUP C-) so I started in gold league, but I've since moved my way into the mid-high diamond range (currently 2167 after a series of losses today T_T). I have a lot of IRL friends who play SC2 over a wide variety of skill levels. Some are high diamond players that are playing tournaments regularly, while others have just picked up the game last week. I can see people at various different levels of the game and actually watch over their shoulder as they play.
Basically, the idea is that if you can cover ALL the points in a league, you're ready to be promoted. obviously you can cheese/go all-in every game and progress faster, but that's not the point of this post. The idea is that if you learn this stuff you will be a SOLID player at that level and you wont rely on your opponent's scan missing your dark shrine or something. So without further ado, here it is:
Bronze League - "This does that and that does this" + Show Spoiler +1) Basic mechanics, what right click vs. left click does, how to attack move etc. You should be familiar with queuing commands, selecting one unit type, etc. etc. 2) Memorization of all hotkeys for your race and consistent use thereof. 3) Knowledge of every unit in the game, not just your own race. This doesn't mean you have to know all applications of each unit, but you need to know what shoots air, what doesn't, what's fast and what's slow etc. Example: you should know that banelings are suicidal units that explode in an area. You should also know what most common spells DO (though you don't have to be able to use them). 4) 1 basic opening build order for every matchup. 5) Ability to defend poorly executed cheese
Essentially here you just be focusing on winning games with very simple strategies off 1 base. Mass MM, mass zealot/stalker, mass roach/ling etc. For now, just focus on making the largest possible 1 base army and attack moving into your opponent.
Silver League - "Never stop doing stuff" + Show Spoiler +1) "Never stop making workers" 2) "Never stop making army" 3) Ability to keep money low while macroing off 1 base and not attacking, it's ok to slip while multitasking 4) Basic use of control groups (nexus/OC/hatch on 4 or 5, army on 1, sub-set of army on 2 etc. basic unit producing structures hotkeyed 5) Basic knowledge and use of counters 6) General knowledge about how unit composition affects your army
Here you're going to be a lot more efficient at the same stuff you did in bronze league. You're also going to begin to look at your opponent and adapt to their play by altering your unit comp.
Gold League - "Finally some strategy" + Show Spoiler +1) Basic knowledge of terrain and how to use it (chokes vs. open areas) 2) Basic micro (ling surrounds, marauder kiting) 3) Ability to macro off 2 bases and keep money low while not attacking. It's ok if you slip while trying to multitask. 4) Basic knowledge and application of map control and map awareness 5) Basic knowledge on how to transition to 2 base play 6) Basic ability to decide on when to attack and where to attack by looking at your opponent 7) Basic ability to "read" other people's openers.
Now you're finally going to (try to) progress from the whole 1a, 2a, 3a thing you've been doing in bronze and silver. It's ok if you're not very good at it, but you should have the basics down, like keep your zealots in front of your stalkers, don't run head first into a row of tanks etc. Your ability to "remember to do stuff" needs to be further developed. The most important thing at this level is you be able to look at your opponent and derive more information that just what to make. You don't need to know precise timings, but you should be able to tell something like "he has 4 gateways, he is going to attack soon" or "that guy made 4 crawlers, it should be safe to expand now".
Platinum League - "I am an efficient player" + Show Spoiler +1) A TIGHT opening BO for each matchup. This means that when you want to make a pylon, you make it when you have 100 minerals, not 200 and not even 125. You need to be almost perfectly tight for at least the first 3-5 minutes of the game. 2) Comfort with 2 base play including multitasking, it's ok to slip on 3+ bases 3) Basic use of spells and abilities, this is more important for some races than others. 4) Ability to take advantage of army positioning - like how to keep yourself safe and how to punish a player for getting out of position 5) Ability to "smell cheese" 6) Ability to react effectively to scouting information 7) Basic knowledge of timings (example: this terran is going 2 barracks marine rush, but I know that if I 14 hatch I can get a crawler up at my natural before he arrives, unless he attacks with 3 or fewer marines, in which case I can defend with drones).
This is the point where you can actually start learning from watching other people's replays and can benefit from reading stuff on the strategy forum here at TL. It's also vitally important to watch your own replays... specifically the replays where you LOSE. Did your money get high? Did you carelessly run into a row of tanks? Did he abuse a timing and force you to cancel your nexus? etc. etc.
I'm not going to talk about diamond league because here it really depends a lot on race, style etc. For example, for zerg, larva management is really important, but that doesn't exist at all for terran and toss. You might decide here to become really good at one-base all-ins and get a lot of points quickly, or you might take the harder route and learn to be a good macro player, progress more slowly, but ultimately become better. Timings are also really important, and your decision making also needs to improve. Note that I haven't talked much about micro. Micro is important, but solid mechanics will beat micro until at least mid-diamond. As long as you have basic micro, you wont lose to a guy with foxer marine micro but silver level macro. That's how sc2 works.
Anyhow, I hope this is beneficial for those of you who are new to SC2. I realize this post is very general and probably doesn't cover everything. Other players will also likely have differences in opinion. This is just from my experience as a player and as an informal coach. I hope this helps!
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This is a decent thread that I hope doesn't get overlooked. I think all too often new players believe being good at SC is all about winning, and so resort to cheesy play like cannon rushing and 6 pooling. But becoming a good player means more than having a w/l ratio high enough to bump you into the next league. Focus should be on developing skill sets and game sense.
Not sure that I 100% agree that all skill sets are in the right place, but I think the general idea is good. Trying to focus on more than just a few things at a time can become overwhelming and its good to have an idea of what types of things you should be ironing out.
5) Basic knowledge and use of counters
This however I do take major issue with. There are no such things as "counters" as Day9 has said there is only forcing and responding.
can benefit from reading stuff on the strategy forum here at TL.
Honestly I think you are better off watching Day9, pro-replays, and user streams.
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I think you are giving some of the lower leagues too much credit.
I have friends who are in gold league/low platinum and they usually always stop worker production at some point (for some reason it's always between 22-26)
They don't have set build orders either (as terran players)
and they DEFINITELY do not know all the hotkeys to their own race
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This might be just me, but I personally feel that you're giving too much credit to the platinum league. In all honesty, I don't think a good majority of platinum players are even able to do half of those points you've mentioned above. This even extends as far into the low diamonds, where I feel some players there can just only manage about 7-10 of your points listed.
I actually think all the points you've listed are around mid diamond level players. This might goes to show how some people overestimate the rankings of SC2.
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if you practice your macro to a T you will get into diamond. macro macro macro
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On December 15 2010 06:55 itzjohnny wrote: This might be just me, but I personally feel that you're giving too much credit to the platinum league. In all honesty, I don't think a good majority of platinum players are even able to do half of those points you've mentioned above. This even extends as far into the low diamonds, where I feel some players there can just only manage about 7-10 of your points listed.
I actually think all the points you've listed are around mid diamond level players. This might goes to show how some people overestimate the rankings of SC2.
Isn't that kind of the point? To get from platinum to diamond that's what you should aim for?
Nice write up! =)
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I agree with this post, most players should work on macro+ scouting until they get to diamond. Have a few basic build orders and just work on executing them. I see too many people trying to make their own build orders add that with poor macro and it just turns bad. also lower levels shouldn't work on their micro, too much micro not enough macro.
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I am going to refer people to this thread. Well done. If possible, you could elaborate even further on the importance of steps (place them in spoilers to avoid large walls of text).
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I would just like to comment that, while it is cute to try and pinpoint labels on them, leagues will change over time. Getting into A rank on iccup was very different 10 seasons ago compared to the last season - it's gotten harder. Similarly getting into diamond (or even platinum) now is slightly harder than it was at launch. And like iccup, I expect it will get harder.
Nonetheless, this is a wonderful and well-written guide to get new players to think in terms of longer arcs of progression in their play. Though the league names may not match up in 1-2 years time, I can see this still being of use to many people who have not yet figured out how to organize all the aspects of playing.
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Calgary25940 Posts
On December 15 2010 06:46 TheToast wrote:This however I do take major issue with. There are no such things as "counters" as Day9 has said there is only forcing and responding. Honestly I think you are better off watching Day9, pro-replays, and user streams. That's retarded, of course there are counters. I don't think you really understood the point he was making when he said that.
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When I read this post I realise that this exactly describes the league I'm in. I'm in silver now, but see some points from gold which I can do already too. Anyway, it's probably hard to describe this since there're a lot of cheesers and they can be in platinum without even knowing the basics of bronze.
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On December 15 2010 06:55 itzjohnny wrote: This might be just me, but I personally feel that you're giving too much credit to the platinum league. In all honesty, I don't think a good majority of platinum players are even able to do half of those points you've mentioned above. This even extends as far into the low diamonds, where I feel some players there can just only manage about 7-10 of your points listed.
I actually think all the points you've listed are around mid diamond level players. This might goes to show how some people overestimate the rankings of SC2. Yeah I think i'm being confusing. This is "what you need to get out of that league", so if you master all the points under a league, you can get promoted is the idea.
So yeah, some plats not knowing all the stuff I have under plat is normal. If they could do all of them, they'd be diamond.
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On December 15 2010 07:15 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 06:46 TheToast wrote:This however I do take major issue with. There are no such things as "counters" as Day9 has said there is only forcing and responding. can benefit from reading stuff on the strategy forum here at TL. Honestly I think you are better off watching Day9, pro-replays, and user streams. That's retarded, of course there are counters. I don't think you really understood the point he was making when he said that.
There are no such thing as "hard counters" that is, no one unit is ultimately good against another. Yes colossi are good against marines, but if terran has 150 marines to your 4 colossi then terran is probably going to win. In this case the player with more stuff will win even though he is being "countered".
Now if P void ray rushes, then he can force T to respond with marines. But marines are not a counter to void rays. Even if T has 20 marines to P's 2 void rays, effective void ray micro can inflict considerable damage to T's forces.
This logic that if your opponent has lots of X unit, then you should get unit Y doesn't hold up and proves to be cyclical. If T has marines, then Y will get banelings, then T will get banshees, then Z will get corruptors, then T will get marines... and so on. Focus should be on getting the right unit composition, not which unit counters which.
As Day9 joked the other day, using this logic floating buildings should be considered a "counter" against zerglings.
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Calgary25940 Posts
On December 15 2010 07:29 TheToast wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 07:15 Chill wrote:On December 15 2010 06:46 TheToast wrote:This however I do take major issue with. There are no such things as "counters" as Day9 has said there is only forcing and responding. can benefit from reading stuff on the strategy forum here at TL. Honestly I think you are better off watching Day9, pro-replays, and user streams. That's retarded, of course there are counters. I don't think you really understood the point he was making when he said that. There are no such thing as "hard counters" that is, no one unit is ultimately good against another. Yes there are.
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On December 15 2010 07:29 TheToast wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 07:15 Chill wrote:On December 15 2010 06:46 TheToast wrote:This however I do take major issue with. There are no such things as "counters" as Day9 has said there is only forcing and responding. can benefit from reading stuff on the strategy forum here at TL. Honestly I think you are better off watching Day9, pro-replays, and user streams. That's retarded, of course there are counters. I don't think you really understood the point he was making when he said that. There are no such thing as "hard counters" that is, no one unit is ultimately good against another. Yes colossi are good against marines, but if terran has 150 marines to your 4 colossi then terran is probably going to win. In this case the player with more stuff will win even though he is being "countered". Now if P void ray rushes, then he can force T to respond with marines. But marines are not a counter to void rays. Even if T has 20 marines to P's 2 void rays, effective void ray micro can inflict considerable damage to T's forces. This logic that if your opponent has lots of X unit, then you should get unit Y doesn't hold up and proves to be cyclical. If T has marines, then Y will get banelings, then T will get banshees, then Z will get corruptors, then T will get marines... and so on. Focus should be on getting the right unit composition, not which unit counters which. As Day9 joked the other day, using this logic floating buildings should be considered a "counter" against zerglings. This is true, however, such in depth knowledge of the game is not needed until like low diamond. Basically when I wrote that under Silver, you should know that if your opponent is making broodlords you should make some vikings, or that 2 ranged collosus with some zealots in front is very effective against an MM ball. Of course, you can stim the marauders, run in and snip the collosus if the protoss micro is bad, but these are silver vs. silver players here. Neither of them are going to have that skill and the idea is that correct unit composition can carry you through most games at the silver level.
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Bronze: 4) 1 basic opening build order for every matchup. 5) Ability to defend poorly executed cheese
Silver: 1) "Never stop making workers" 2) "Never stop making army" 3) Ability to keep money low while macroing off 1 base and not attacking, it's ok to slip while multitasking
Gold: 3) Ability to macro off 2 bases and keep money low while not attacking. It's ok if you slip while trying to multitask.
Platinum: 1) A TIGHT opening BO for each matchup. This means that when you want to make a pylon, you make it when you have 100 minerals, not 200 and not even 125. You need to be almost perfectly tight for at least the first 3-5 minutes of the game. 7) Basic knowledge of timings (example: this terran is going 2 barracks marine rush, but I know that if I 14 hatch I can get a crawler up at my natural before he arrives, unless he attacks with 3 or fewer marines, in which case I can defend with drones).
I'm in diamond and I either don't have, or I am not too good at, all of these. I feel you can get to diamond with basic fundamentals and some unit control.
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Seems like a silly thread. I'm guessing you just wrote things that you thought would be required for each league. The only thing that stands out among the leagues are the frequencies of cheesing. Bronze -> low cheese. Gold/Plat -> high cheese. Diamond -> low cheese.
You'd might as well listed a bunch of SC skills, and say the more of these you have the higher the league you'll be in.
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Australia8532 Posts
On December 15 2010 06:46 TheToast wrote:This is a decent thread that I hope doesn't get overlooked. I think all too often new players believe being good at SC is all about winning, and so resort to cheesy play like cannon rushing and 6 pooling. But becoming a good player means more than having a w/l ratio high enough to bump you into the next league. Focus should be on developing skill sets and game sense. Not sure that I 100% agree that all skill sets are in the right place, but I think the general idea is good. Trying to focus on more than just a few things at a time can become overwhelming and its good to have an idea of what types of things you should be ironing out. This however I do take major issue with. There are no such things as "counters" as Day9 has said there is only forcing and responding.Honestly I think you are better off watching Day9, pro-replays, and user streams.
Lol blind quoting day[9] is funny.. of course there are counters; zerg going mass roach will probably be destroyed by mass marauders? Hellion vs Zerglings? Day[9] is trying to point out that people get stuck on the counter philosophy to much.. He mocks people who think if they get the counter they can't lose or "omg he went X unit.. counter counter counter!"
Counters do exist.. It would be silly to think otherwise..
Edit: thanks for the OP there are some skills in there that correctly describe the correct leagues - some good basic points! Good write up!
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On December 15 2010 07:35 JulianSidewind wrote:Show nested quote + Bronze: 4) 1 basic opening build order for every matchup. 5) Ability to defend poorly executed cheese
Silver: 1) "Never stop making workers" 2) "Never stop making army" 3) Ability to keep money low while macroing off 1 base and not attacking, it's ok to slip while multitasking
Gold: 3) Ability to macro off 2 bases and keep money low while not attacking. It's ok if you slip while trying to multitask.
Platinum: 1) A TIGHT opening BO for each matchup. This means that when you want to make a pylon, you make it when you have 100 minerals, not 200 and not even 125. You need to be almost perfectly tight for at least the first 3-5 minutes of the game. 7) Basic knowledge of timings (example: this terran is going 2 barracks marine rush, but I know that if I 14 hatch I can get a crawler up at my natural before he arrives, unless he attacks with 3 or fewer marines, in which case I can defend with drones).
I'm in diamond and I either don't have, or I am not too good at, all of these. I feel you can get to diamond with basic fundamentals and some unit control.
Yes but are you a consistent, solid player, or do you go all-in a lot? Do you have a variety in strategies under your belt? Obviously you CAN get into diamond by 4 gating every game, but that's not fun and that's going to hit a wall sometime around 1000 pts diamond.
And obviously as you get higher into diamond, there will times where you will want to stop making workers (late game obviously, but you can also start cutting probes, for example, to do a more powerful rush, or if you 1 gate FE in the face of a 3 rax push, you need to cut probes after the nexus goes down until you've started 3 additional gateways and a robotics). But silver level players are better off making probes all the time.
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On December 15 2010 07:36 Mr_Kyo wrote: Seems like a silly thread. I'm guessing you just wrote things that you thought would be required for each league. The only thing that stands out among the leagues are the frequencies of cheesing. Bronze -> low cheese. Gold/Plat -> high cheese. Diamond -> low cheese.
You'd might as well listed a bunch of SC skills, and say the more of these you have the higher the league you'll be in. Diamond has high cheese.
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